


Leopold Fitz's Diary

by agentverbivore (verbivore8642)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pride and Prejudice Fusion, Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, Awkward Flirting, Cheating, Costumes, Crack, Diary/Journal, Drinking, Easter, F/M, Fencing, Flirting, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Holidays, Humor, Jemma Simmons Has No Chill, Kissing, Leo Fitz Feels, Matchmaking, Misunderstandings, New Year's Resolutions, POV Leo Fitz, Pining, Rabbits, Role Reversal, Romantic Comedy, Second-Hand Embarrassment, Sexual Tension, Swearing, Team Dynamics, Ugly Holiday Sweaters, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Walking Disaster!Fitz, temporary Fitz/Raina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 08:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7969123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbivore8642/pseuds/agentverbivore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Convinced his life is hopelessly off track, Leo Fitz decides to keep a diary. Over the course of the following year, he finds himself constantly running into Jemma Simmons, the standoffish biochem genius he has been incapable of impressing since he was sixteen. Why should now be any different?</p><p>
  <span class="small">A <i>Bridget Jones's Diary</i> AU.</span>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All By Myself

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to MK for beta-ing, as always - and for understanding the odd mix of BJD/P&P that this ended up being. ;-)
> 
> Chapter titles taken from the Bridget Jones's Diary soundtrack. (Turn-of-the-century classics, all.)
> 
> Dialogue pulled directly from the movie is sprinkled throughout the fic - obviously, I did not write those lines.
> 
> Set in an AU where SHIELD is sort of a cross between its canon self, the FBI, and the CIA - so it's out in the open, and Hydra doesn't exist. Oh, and most of our faves all live and work in London. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Lots of crack. All the crack. {{Say 'crack' again.}} Crack.
> 
> Rated a hard T for a _lot_ of swearing, and a bit of nudity/sex talk.

[ ](http://agentverbivore.tumblr.com/post/150040613458/leopold-fitzs-diary-based-on)

* * *

The new year began with Leopold Fitz staring blearily up at the ceiling and wondering when he’d become the kind of person to make poor life choices. He was certifiably brilliant, after all – had a PhD before he’d even entered his second decade to prove it and everything. Yet for some reason the night before he’d decided to let his friends convince him to try Goldschlägger, even though he knew he had a work function to go to the next day. Currently, he was trying to take stock of his limbs, but that was proving rather difficult as he couldn’t remember how many limbs he was supposed to have.

Technically, it was less of a work function and more of a turkey curry buffet arranged by the Director of SHIELD, his gainful place of employment. But Fitz’s supervisor had made it abundantly clear that SHIELD’s London science division needed new funding, and if Fitz didn’t help them get said funding by sucking up to the director then he would be out on his arse looking for new gainful employment. It didn’t help that his supervisor was as much of an idiot as Fitz was a genius, which meant that they had a somewhat fraught relationship. 

Groaning the whole way, Fitz turned over to squint at the light-up TARDIS clock that decorated his bedside table. If he managed to force himself into the shower now, he _might_ be able to get to the party by five. Assuming that he didn’t throw up between the bed and the toilet. 

Although the shower was definitely higher up off the floor than he remembered it being yesterday, he managed to go about his daily routine with only a little bit of falling over in between. As he shrugged on his nicest jacket – a navy woolen peacoat his mum had given him for his birthday – something bright red and rectangular fell out of the pocket. His fingers curled around the spine of what was evidently a diary, and as he straightened vague memories from the night before spun into his head. Skye, his best friend and a former pop star, had been given the thing by a fan as they’d darted in through the last club’s VIP ropes, with Hunter and Trip ducking after them. Insistent that she would never use the thing, she’d shoved it into Fitz’s pocket, and he’d completely forgotten about it until now. 

At the time, Hunter (who had been long since three sheets to the wind by that point) had mocked the idea of anyone keeping a diary anymore. (“That’s what bloody Twitter’s for, innit? So’s everyone can see what you’re thinkin’.”) But now, standing in his tiny, one-bedroom flat, hung-over beyond what he could ever remember experiencing before, Fitz thought that the idea didn’t sound too bad. Much as he’d never admit it to anyone else, he’d felt like he was at a professional and personal plateau: Thanks to his supervisor constantly being up his arse, he never could seem to get the recognition he deserved for his superb work at SHIELD, and having a love life was just about as foreign an idea to him as moving to America. Perhaps what he needed was someplace private to scratch out all of his thoughts, giving him something more concrete to look at and improve upon. After all, that’s what the New Year was for, wasn’t it?

In a fit of self-reflective inspiration, Fitz grabbed a pencil from where it lay on a rejected blueprint and scribbled out the very first entry in his brand new diary.

 _01 Jan. 2014  
__Today is shit. Let’s hope the year is not._  

With that, he tossed the thing onto the table and sped out the door – he was already twenty minutes late.

 

\------

 

“Seriously, Trip, now is not the _bloody_ time to set me up –” 

“Aw c’mon, man, live a little!”

Fitz frowned up at his taller friend, wondering for the tenth time how the hell he could seem so chipper when he’d been out just as late this morning and had at _least_ as much to drink. “You’re lucky Skye likes you.” 

“Or what,” Trip replied blithely, his smile predictably brightening the room as he steered Fitz around a group of giggling comm-ops agents, “you’d kick my ass?”

“Don’t say that like it’s completely impossible,” Fitz muttered, allowing his friend to plant him a few feet away from the end of the buffet table.

The party was being held on the ground floor of the London SHIELD building, a six-story mass of concrete that could probably withstand missile attacks if given enough warning. Each floor circled around a hollow space, which on the bottom floor housed an airy, open lobby that the agency often used for office functions. Coulson, once he’d been handed the directorship from Nick Fury, had taken advantage of its convenience far more than his predecessor.

“You’ll remember why we’re friends once you’re not hung-over.” 

“I’ll take that bet.”

Chuckling, Trip leaned over and shifted Fitz slightly so that they were facing the same direction. “Look, just – try to remember to be a human for a few minutes, okay? I think you’re really gonna dig this girl. I met her back when I was working in SHIELD’s DC division. Big up-and-comer in the New York office at the time, smart as hell, and boy – you’ve never seen eyes like hers.”

“Tell me why _you’re_ not dating her, then.”

“I’m not her type.” When Fitz gave Trip a droll look, he just shrugged. “Not smart enough – but you, my man, are more than a match for her. At least, you are when you haven’t been mainlining rat poison –”

“Goldschlägger –”

“Same difference.”

“Christ,” Fitz groaned, rubbing his eyes, “I’m never letting Hunter talk me into doing shot-for-shots again.”

“She’s a biochemist,” Trip continued, ignoring Fitz’s brief fit of self-pity. “You know how you keep saying you wish SHIELD London would hire one worthwhile? Well, she’s one of the best in the world – transferred here over the holidays. Starts next week.” 

His horrendous mood and hangover aside, Fitz couldn’t quite squash the interest that the idea of meeting a world-class biochemist peaked. Engineering specialist though he may be, Fitz had always thought many of his groundbreaking ideas might be improved upon with the input of the right expert in those other fields. Of course, the odds of him ever actually meeting someone who met his high expectations for a collaborator were unlikely, to say the least. (Or, even less likely, that he would find someone willing to put up with his own personal brand of finicky genius.) But if Trip respected this scientist, then the least that Fitz could do was meet her. 

“You owe me,” Fitz grumbled, acquiescing in as ungracious a way possible.

Laughing, Trip nudged him towards the buffet table, next to which a very tall blonde was speaking to a very short brunette. “For what, setting you up with the girl of your dreams? I don’t think the math’s with you on that one, man.”

“I don’t need maths to be with me, I just need....”

But he trailed off as the brunette turned slightly to grab a spoon off the end of the table and he caught her face in profile. Just his luck – Trip was spot on with thinking that Fitz would like this woman, but he was wrong to think that an introduction was necessary.

Jemma Simmons needed no introduction. 

Well, she had the first time he’d met her, but almost a decade had passed since then. When Fitz had shown up at SHIELD Academy, having just turned sixteen and desperate to prove that he belonged with the world’s best and brightest scientific minds, Simmons was the only person whose admiration he actively sought – and never earned. Admittedly, “actively” might be a bit of a stretch, because he spent so much time thinking about what to say that he never got a chance to say it. From the day they’d met to the day they’d graduated, Fitz had always wanted to impress her, and instead the only memory she could possibly have of him was when he’d run naked through the backyard of her Sci-Ops apartment complex.

So he’d been told the next day, anyway. He’d been twenty years old, blind drunk, and dared to either do that or share the specs for his newest invention with the entire group of engineers who had been partying off-campus that night. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t one of Fitz’s proudest moments, even if he couldn’t remember it. (The night’s saving grace was that no one had thought to take a picture, and since Simmons had worked in an entirely different department, he’d never learned what she thought about his drunken adventures.)

That non-memory was also why he turned bright pink at just the sight of Simmons’ face and choked on his next sip of beer. Trip thumped him on the back and gave him a concerned look. 

“You alright?” 

“Yeah, I just....” Fitz replied hoarsely, clearing his throat. “I know her.” 

“There you are!” The boisterous voice of SHIELD’s director sounded from behind them, and, with a somewhat forced smile, Fitz turned around to greet his boss. An eggnog-fueled glint in his eye, Phil Coulson reached out to bring Fitz in for a bear hug, and the engineer wondered how he’d gotten to the point of effectively being adopted by a middle-aged American man. 

“Been looking all over for you,” Coulson continued, giving Trip a hearty handshake. “Eat up, eat up, we’re only all together like this once a year.”

“It’s a great shindig, Director,” Trip said, and Fitz squinted as he fought his instinct to point out that the Director ordered get-togethers and parties like this approximately once every three months. 

“Shindig, fiesta, fête, you know it,” Coulson answered, before reaching deep into the red velvet bag he had at his side and bringing out a particularly obnoxious Christmas cardigan. 

Forest green and patterned with candy-canes, the thing was an eyesore the likes of which Fitz hadn’t seen since he’d spent the holidays at his aunt and uncle’s house half a dozen years ago. For a brief, shining second, he harbored a burst of pity for the poor sod to whom Coulson was going to give the horror. Then he realized that the director was holding it out to him. Standing a good foot taller than their boss, Trip hid a grin behind his beer bottle.

“You kept avoiding me before Christmas, Fitz,” Coulson said amicably, “so sorry my present’s late.”

“Oh,” he said weakly, allowing the neon green disaster to be shoved into his hands, “really, that’s fine, I don’t much wear, ah, jumpers....” 

“What?” Coulson gave him an incredulous look. “You wear a sweater every day. If I didn’t see the others in the science division more than you, I’d think cardigans were Turgeon’s preferred uniform.”

“Don’t you have a whole half of your closet dedicated to sweaters?” Trip added helpfully, and Fitz shot him a glare.

“There you go,” Coulson said gleefully, pushing the jumper more firmly in Fitz’s direction. “Put ‘er on!”

Fitz sighed, glanced over to where his supervisor was staring beadily at him from across the room, and began to shrug his arms into the Christmas horror. Maybe if he spent two hours in jumper purgatory, Coulson would agree to give them the extra funding his supervisor had charged him with securing. 

“There, you go, it fits perfectly!” Coulson grinned and slung the bag of presumably even uglier cardigans over his shoulder. “Gotta run – ‘bout time I’ll be needed in the kitchen. May gets cranky if I leave her in there alone for too long. Lumpy gravy calls. Merry Christmas, Fitz, Trip!”

The jumper, Fitz thought as he stared glumly at his boss’s retreating back, did actually fit surprisingly well. Apparently Coulson had an eye for clothes sizing. Not that the thing would do much to hide Fitz’s clearly untrimmed scruff, disastrously messy bed hair, or the dark circles beneath his eyes. 

Beside him, Trip’s shoulders were shaking as he tried not to laugh, and Fitz gave him a sharp elbow in the side. “Where’s yours, then?"

“On my way here, I saw a homeless woman who had just given birth to a baby in the freezing, January weather,” Trip deadpanned, dropping his bottle into a nearby bin. “And I offered my sweater to keep the kid warm.”

Fitz stared at him. “Seriously?”

“No,” Trip said, giving him a double take as he steered them both towards the buffet table. “Damn, you’re as bad as Coulson. He bought that crock of shit, too.” 

“It just sounds like the kind of thing you’d do,” Fitz tossed back, wriggling out of Trip’s grasp. “Being all muscley and heroic twenty-four hours a day.”

“Today’s my day off.” Trip grabbed onto Fitz’s shoulders and spun him around so he was facing the table again, at the other end of which stood the woman to whom he’d hoped Trip would forget about introducing him. “Okay, Romeo, here’s your shot.” 

“I don’t –”

“Just be yourself,” Trip said, voice low and not quite as dry as it had been a moment before. “She’ll love you.”

Then he shoved Fitz forward hard enough that he nearly crashed right into the buffet. With another glare back at his friend, he straightened his jumper – and, oh God, realized that he was about to talk to Jemma Simmons for the first time in a decade while wearing the world’s ugliest Christmas jumper. On New Year’s Day. While he was still completely and utterly hung-over. 

On the plus side, he thought as he grabbed for a plate, at least he was wearing _any_ clothes this time. That had to be some kind of step up.

As he dumped turkey curry onto the too-warm porcelain, he could just barely hear Simmons talking to the taller woman who he could now see was actually Bobbi Morse, Hunter’s on-again off-again girlfriend/wife/“sparring” partner (depending on the week).

“Seriously, Jemma, you’ll adore him –” 

“Bobbi,” Jemma snapped, putting her glass down a little too forcefully at the edge of the table, “you know I trust you. But after the year I’ve had, the last thing I need is to have a blind date with some verbally incompetent, pasty-skinned engineer who can’t get promoted, lives in a pigsty, and was probably dressed this morning by his mother.”

At just that moment, Fitz attempted to put the unwieldy ladle back into the curry dish, missed the edge, and managed to splatter yellow-green goo all over his brand new sweater. Fortunately, that didn’t actually ruin the hideous thing, since its existence alone was odious enough. Unfortunately, the splattering and his own bitten-off swear managed to catch both Simmons and Bobbi’s attention.

With a small gasp, Simmons spun more fully around to stare at him head-on. “Fitz?!” 

“Oh,” Bobbi said, politely not looking at the turkey curry as it dripped from the cardigan onto the floor, “you already know each other?”

“Know....” Simmons trailed off and her eyes widened as she stared around at the other woman. “ _This_ was who....”

“The Academy,” Fitz interrupted, giving them both a tight smile. “Been a while, Simmons.” Instead of answering, she just swallowed, a blush blooming on her cheeks. “I’ve got to, ah, y’know,” he said, waving at his chest, “so you just, enjoy the curry, Coulson’s is the best. In London. Outside of Harrow. Or, um....” He exhaled, shoving his plate onto the table and turning around. “Yeah.” 

That, right there, was the moment he knew things had to change.

Once in the loo, Fitz yanked off the cardigan and dumped it unceremoniously in the bin. As he peered in the mirror, cleaning off the bit of curry that had somehow made its way into his hair, he had an abrupt moment of clarity. Outside of his very small group of friends – most of whom were more gregarious coworkers that had browbeaten their friendship into him – and his mum, he had virtually no other people who cared about him (or who he cared about in turn). Any dates he went on were largely dull, and those were few and far between. Unless something changed soon, the only meaningful relationship he’d ever have was with some bloke named Macallan. 

So Fitz vowed to take charge of his life.

 

_(typed on mobile at approx. 18:45) 01 Jan. 2014_

_To add to diary [god that sounds poncey] – New Year’s resolutions: Drink less, talk to people more, and don’t wake up shitfaced on first day of next year. Also, don’t talk to old school crushes without at least a month of preparation first._

 

\------

 

“‘Some bloke named Macallan,’” Skye drawled, doing her trademark cringe-worthy Scottish accent as she imitated Fitz. “How long did it take you to come up with that speech?”

“The walk here,” Fitz muttered, finishing off the last of his Scotch. “I’m serious, though, I don’t wanna wake up to another new year by myself. It’s shite.” 

After hiding around the outskirts of the SHIELD party for as long as he could stand it, Fitz had deftly avoided seeing Simmons again by escaping out the back exit and making a run for his favorite pub. His two least responsible friends (and co-workers) had long since bid the party adieu, and were already hunched over their traditional bar-adjacent table with half-finished drinks in their hands.

“You need to work on your game,” Hunter slurred, waving at the bartender to bring them another round. 

“Says you,” Skye shot back, grabbing a glistening new pint from the counter. “What time _did_ Bobbi kick you out last night? Before or after the second booty call?”

Already too drunk to think of a comeback, Hunter made a face in her direction. To be fair, she had a point; considering that their divorce was just as on-again, off-again as his and Bobbi’s marriage had been, he really shouldn’t be giving advice about having game to anyone else.

“Hey guys,” came Trip’s voice as he emerged from the crowd. “Y’all left before the cake!”

“Worth it,” Skye and Fitz muttered simultaneously, and then clinked glasses.

Once he’d ordered his own drink, Trip slid onto his traditional stool next to Fitz. “So, you left before I could ask – how’d it go with Simmons?”

“Oh,” he replied drily, “yeah, right, fantastic, we’ll be getting married any day now. Can’t go anywhere without her by my side. Wait, where is she...?” Raising an eyebrow, he took a large swig of his pint. “Yeah, didn’t go great.” 

Trip frowned at his response, and Fitz had a brief bout of wonder at how someone that well built could be so earnest. “What happened?” 

“She doesn’t have the highest opinion of me, let’s leave it at that.” 

“And Fitz spilled curry on his new sweater,” Skye added helpfully, ducking to the right when he flicked at her shoulder.

“That can’t be right,” Trip continued, ignoring their teasing as only a spec-ops agent could do. “You should try again, maybe in the lab –”

“Drop it,” Fitz snapped, probably a little more harshly than his friend deserved. But he was somewhere between being hung-over and drunk again, and he wasn’t in the mood to explain that, his scientific acumen aside, he was apparently so beneath Simmons that she couldn’t even bring herself to speak to him. Where this revelation might have simply stung with anyone else, it needled so painfully at the part of him that had once thought they’d get on that he felt the need to numb just about everything until he forgot that it had ever happened.

“Look, man, you respect me, right?”

Squinting wearily over at Trip, Fitz sighed. “Yeah. More’n any other spec-ops agent, anyway.” 

“Hey!” Distracted by his righteous indignation, Hunter let a dribble of foam escape down the side of his umpteenth pint. 

“You _know_ I don’t respect you,” Fitz retorted, and Hunter paused as he gave that argument a moment of thought.

“That’s fair. Continue.”

“So trust me,” Trip went on, giving Fitz’s shoulder a small nudge, “whatever happened at that party, she _doesn’t_ hate you. Give it another shot.”

“Not in this lifetime,” he muttered in reply, distracted from his own self-loathing by the feeling of someone tapping on his shoulder. 

“Excuse me,” said the woman doing the tapping, and Fitz couldn’t help the way his eyebrows raised when he saw who was standing behind him. With dark skin, large, captivating eyes, and a halo of curls, she was easily the most stunning woman who had ever deigned to talk to Fitz at this pub. Her amethyst dress was dotted with small, embroidered flowers, and hugged her figure in such a way that he was hard-pressed to not let his eyes wander. “Leopold Fitz?”

“Just Fitz,” he corrected her automatically, a tinge of warmth flushing his cheeks.

“Right,” she replied, face splitting in a perfectly shy smile, “Fitz.” 

“How d’you....” 

“Oh God,” she said, shrinking slightly and half-covering her face with one hand, “that must’ve sounded so creepy, I’m sorry! I work for SHIELD, in comms. I’m Raina.” When she held one hand out, Fitz turned sideways in his chair to give her a solid shake of greeting. 

“Nice to meet you, Raina,” he said in reply, although he was still utterly nonplussed as to why she was speaking to him.

Spying the people at the table behind him, Raina gave them all a small wave. “I actually work down the hall from Skye.”

Skye squinted at the other woman, possibly trying to place her, and then half-raised her glass in response. 

“Um,” Raina began, drawing Fitz’s eyes to her again, “I wanted to try to talk to you at the turkey curry buffet –”

“Culinary treat, that,” he muttered, and she broke into a peal of laughter, resting her hand on his arm. 

“Oh, I know, right? But, anyway, you disappeared before I could, and I was so glad when I saw you over here I just had to stop by. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Only trying to numb the new year,” Hunter interjected, waiting for the boisterous laugh from the others that never came. “D’you want the table? We can –” 

“No, no,” she said quickly, glancing over her shoulder. “I have to go. But I just wanted to say your memo about the use of weapons in SHIELD? Week before last? I just thought it was amazing. It’s too bad Turgeon isn’t giving you run of the division, you obviously deserve it.” 

“Oh.” Fitz puffed his chest up a bit, trying to give her a humble shrug (and mostly just looking like he was preening). “Yeah, well, bureaucracy and all –”

“God, I _know_ ,” she replied, giving his arm an empathetic squeeze. “SHIELD’s lousy with it. Maybe we could, I don’t know, go out to drinks sometime, and vent about it.”

Something about the way she said the word “vent” seemed undeniably sexual, and he blinked at her mutely for a few seconds before he could respond. “Uh, yeah, that sounds – fine.”

“Great.” Raina gave him a warm smile, letting her eyes wander up and down the length of his body briefly before stepping back. “See you around the building, then. Happy New Year, Fitz.”

“Happy New Year,” he half-heartedly called out as she disappeared into the crowd, wincing as a loud whistle pierced the air from behind him. 

“That’s my boy,” Hunter enthused, slapping him so hard on the back that he almost vaulted into the high table. “Drawing ‘em in without even needing to get up from his chair.”

Skye started clapping her hands together in an annoyingly peppy rhythm. “Hey Fitzy, you so fine,” she sang, much to his chagrin and with a wide grin on her face, “you so fine you blow Raina’s mind, hey Fitzy, hey Fitzy!”

“Too many syllables,” he muttered, burying his face in his pint and unable to hide his begrudgingly pleased smile.

“You should’ve walked her out, mate,” Hunter said, gesturing with his glass and slopping a splash of it onto the table. “Birds love that.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” some girl exclaimed, having halted mid-step a couple of feet from their table. Indian with a distinctly Harrow accent, she stared wide-eyed at Skye for a few seconds before she could speak again, and Fitz rolled his eyes. Here it was – their celebrity spotting of the night. “Aren’t you the lead singer of the Quaking Daisies?"  

Letting her eyes wander shamelessly up and down the girl’s body, Skye knocked back the last of her drink before answering. A former pop star who had only recorded one hit record before quitting and running away with a hacker collective, she didn’t exactly advertise her former celebrity status, but she happily used it to get herself laid as often as she liked (when she and Trip weren’t theoretically secretly booty-calling each other, anyway).

Evidently, this girl – with purple streaks in her hair and a local uni’s lanyard hanging out of her pocket – measured up to whatever Skye was looking for tonight, and she smiled fetchingly back at her. “Skye Johnson, at your service.”

“ _Skye_ ,” the girl repeated, obviously confused. “But wasn’t the band named after you...?”

“Easier to keep my I.D. on the D.L.,” she explained in a faux-whisper.

“The disabled list?” Fitz whispered to Trip, who shook his head.

“The down-low,” he corrected, and Fitz let out a soft noise of understanding. 

“I only tell people I have a good feeling about who I am,” Skye continued, keeping her eyes on her fan. “And I have a real good feeling about you.” The girl giggled, stepping back as Skye slid off her stool. “I’m getting another – can I buy you something?” 

She nodded enthusiastically, trailing after Skye towards the bar. “‘The Lightning Queen’ is my _favorite_ song in the whole world, I have all the words memorized....”

“I dunno how she does it,” Hunter muttered, giving his head a wide-eyed shake. “She gets more play than any of us.”

“That’s because she’s hotter than any of us,” Trip pointed out.

“An argument could be made for you,” Fitz retorted, swatting one of Trip’s impeccably formed biceps.

“Thanks, man,” Trip said with a grin, tilting his pint in Fitz’s direction before downing it.

The three of them shot the breeze for another hour or so – keeping tabs on how long it took Skye to decide whether or not to seduce the girl in the bar itself or to take her back to her flat – before calling it quits for the night. As the three of them stumbled into the street – or, at least, Fitz and Hunter stumbled, while Trip strode gracefully across the concrete like a jungle cat – Hunter reached out to grab the shoulder of Fitz’s jacket.

“Just promise me,” Hunter yelled far too loudly for the empty street, “that you’re not gonna go home and listen to [Chaka Khan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xuUdI1an0) by yourself on sad-FM.” 

Rolling his eyes and shrugging off his friend’s hold, Fitz waved goodbye to Trip and turned in the direction of his flat, which was, fortunately, only a couple of blocks away. Actually, he had every intention of going home, turning on sad.FM, and writing drunkenly in his new diary about how, even a decade after the last time he saw Simmons, clearly the cosmos still had it out for him. But he didn’t need to tell Hunter that.

 

_02 Jan. 2014  
_ _dunno why Huntser dont like sad.FM, s’not bad. good for singinggalong! vvvvv true for life too. always been my myself, will be[by myself ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8iTZm8-mbA)for always. but I dont wanna be.   
_ _will keep New Year’s res’s. ‘cept for drinkin less. start that one tomorrow._


	2. Pretender Got My Heart

Although it was not difficult for the first few weeks of the new year to improve upon the final weeks of the prior one, it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless. Even though Fitz’s boss continued to stonewall his attempts at actually receiving the grant he’d been given by SHIELD to manufacture nonlethal weaponry, his drone redesign was coming along swimmingly. He even managed to squeeze in enough time to work on the camouflage design for the agency’s fleet of varied planes and quinjets.

Raina began paying him quick little visits in the lab, ostensibly to bring him coffee (which he always threw away, being more of a tea drinker but reluctant to sound ungrateful) but mostly to flirt, much to his continued puzzlement. The strangeness of her sudden interest in him aside, he grew to anticipate her visits, brief though they may be; it was a nice change to have someone _want_ to talk to him at the office, rather than be forced to. His diary began to include little notations of things Raina liked – flowers, wine, his ties – in addition to his wry observations about his coworkers.

Unfortunately, however, the SHIELD director’s fondness for Fitz continued to put roadblocks in his plans to reboot his life. A month into the new year SHIELD held its annual gala, mostly to woo the local London government officials with whom it had to coordinate so many of its efforts. Coulson, ever one for brilliant ideas, thought it would be a good idea to have SHIELD’s newest scientific (and English) star – Simmons – give a small speech and introduce him. In turn, the director needed someone to introduce her – and who better than her old Academy colleague and fellow Brit? Fitz protested vigorously but to no avail; Coulson was adamant that they would open the event. 

So this was how, one Thursday evening at the beginning of February, Fitz was attempting to psych himself up to striding onto the brightly lit stage that loomed over the party. Public speaking had never exactly been his forte. In fact, he was fairly certain he remembered once blacking out when he had to give a speech in front of his third grade class (although, in all fairness, that may have been because the class bully had threatened to pelt him with tomatoes in the middle of it). The thing was that he’d actually gotten a lot better with age. As an engineer who was heavily involved in R&D, giving lectures and briefings would be an integral part of his adult life, and so he’d forced himself to practice regularly when he was at Sci-Ops. With time, he became good enough that he hardly even worried about public speaking anymore, his proverbial skin having grown thick enough through isolation and brilliance that he barely even registered audience titters.

This evening, however, he’d spotted Simmons right before making his way to the stage’s metal stairs, and seeing her had thrown him right back to the sixteen-year-old kid he’d been their first year at the Academy. Even though she was now standing behind him, as he teetered at the edge of the stage, he could picture her face perfectly, expression surely pinched in apprehension. His head began to swim a little in nervousness, and he abruptly wished he’d had more than one beer before coming to the front. A little more liquid courage would be welcome right about now. With a sharp shake of his head, he strode up to the podium, stumbled, and caught onto the wooden stand with both hands.

When he glanced self-consciously behind himself to the side of the stage, there stood Simmons, one hand over her mouth and a distinct cringe on her face. Trip had to be absolutely mad to think she’d ever want anything to do with him professionally or platonically, let alone to date.

“Hello?” His voice didn’t reverberate through the speakers, and he tried tapping the metal head of the microphone. Nothing. As the crowd’s murmurs began to rise rather than quiet, Fitz desperately wanted to be away from here as quickly as possible, so he screwed up his face, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted: “OI!” 

That got the crowd’s attention, and he gave them a grimace that was supposed to be more of a smile. “Mic’s not working! So, ah,” he continued to yell while trying _not_ to yell, “bear with me!”

Even with the bright lights on the stage, he could see his co-workers giving each other unimpressed glances as he read from his notecards the introduction he was supposed to give Simmons, touting her achievements and celebrating her transferal to the biggest SHIELD office in her home country. The content was familiar enough and true, so at least he didn’t stumble over the speech verbally as he just had literally. “So please give a big welcome to Doctor Jemma Simmons!” 

Loud applause erupted from the crowd as she stepped up onto the stage next to him, her demure, raspberry-colored cardigan doing particularly fetching things to her figure under the stage lights.

“Thank you, Doctor Fitz,” she said, reaching around him to slide her hand beneath the top of the podium. A low whine echoed through the speakers, and she gave him a small smile. “Let’s just turn that on, shall we?”

Cheeks burning, he escaped from the stage as quickly as his feet would take him. _When_ had he turned into a complete and utter moron who didn’t even check to see if the mic was _on_? He’d earned his PhD before he was sixteen years old, for God’s sake, it wasn’t as if he was a slouch in the brains department. Apparently, being within ten feet of Jemma Simmons turned him into a nervous, disastrous wreck the likes of which he hadn’t been in a decade. Perhaps it would be best for everyone if he stayed away from her anyway.

Later, as he avoided his friends in favor of slumping against a column at the back of the room and downing the last of his second scotch, he had the grave misfortune to accidentally meet Simmons’ eyes as she navigated through the party. For whatever reason, she’d been weaving through the throng of agents, likely searching for someone, and then had stopped when they’d made accidental eye contact. Fitz looked away as quickly as possible, hoping against everything that she would just follow his lead in pretending that nothing had gone amiss and return to ignoring him. In his peripheral vision, he could see her square her shoulders, take two steps forward – and then someone strode between them, blocking her from his sight.

“Can I get you another?” Raina gave him an empathetic smile and he chuckled. “Seems like you might need it.” 

“I dunno,” he said, rubbing one hand along the back of his neck. “If I have another of these, I’ll probably just make more bad life decisions.” 

“Oh, then I’m _definitely_ getting you another,” she teased, giving him a coy smile, and reached out to curl her fingers around his wrist. “What’s your year? Fifty? Seventy-five?”

“Uh, fifty,” he answered, too caught off-guard to provide any resistance as Raina led him through the crowd. 

Looking up from the floor, Fitz caught Simmons’ eyes again when he was pulled past her, something oddly pained flashing across her face as he went by. When he turned around, though, she had already disappeared within the mass of SHIELD employees.

Disconcert about her expression hovered in the back of his mind for quite some time after that, particularly because he would swear that Raina had glared at her as they’d passed. 

\------ 

“So,” Fitz started, swirling his second (or was it third?) scotch of the evening, “you gonna tell me what that was about?” 

At Raina’s request, they’d stepped outside of the main ballroom and were leaning against a wall, partially hidden by an enormous potted fern. On his other side was a large suit of armor, which he gave brief thought to inspecting while the Director was otherwise occupied. When Coulson had taken over the running of SHIELD, he’d redecorated the whole building to reflect his particular fascination with historical artifacts of both espionage and warfare. Now, the hallways were dotted with pseudo-medieval shield and sword displays, as well as cases filled with things like shoe-disguised mobile phones and joy-buzzer EMPs.

Leaning on one shoulder, nearly close enough that he could feel the heat of her through his shirtsleeve, Raina raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Saw the way you and Simmons looked at each other. I know she only just started here, but –” 

“Oh, I worked in the New York office for a year or so. Transferred here in the fall...” she trailed off, eyes lowering in apparent discomfort. “If I’m being honest, I wasn’t thrilled to see she’d been assigned here.”

As someone who was normally so gregarious and effortlessly charming, to see her rather diminished while she spoke now was unsettling. “Mind if I ask, or should I bugger off?” 

Raina pursed her lips, letting silence fill the space between them for a few, long seconds before answering. “I was... seeing someone back in New York. It was pretty serious, we’d been together for a year.” A half-smile flitted across her face. “I think he was getting ready to propose.” She blinked, then, as if she’d just remembered that Fitz was there, and looked away. “One day, I walked into his lab – Milton worked at SHIELD, too – and she was....” Clearing her throat, she quickly made the universal hand symbol for blowjob, and Fitz flinched. 

“What, seriously?” Dropping her hand, Raina nodded and leaned back against the wall, looking utterly miserable. “That just... doesn’t seem like Simmons.”

She shrugged, picking at the flower embroidery on her dress. “Maybe you don’t know her like you thought you did.” 

Fitz snorted and took another sip of his drink. “Well, isn't  _that_ the bloody truth.”

After a few seconds, she let out a small huff of frustration and tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t... didn’t mean to bring the mood down.” 

“Nah, I’m sorry,” he said, gently nudging her shoulder with his. “Shouldn’t’ve asked. Always asked too many questions, my mum said. Can I do anything to make you feel better?”

A slow grin spread across her face, and she turned, letting her eyes drag down and then back up the length of his body. “Actually....” Then she kissed him full on the mouth, winding her arms around his neck to pull him closer in.

Fitz sort of stumbled into her, off-kilter thanks to the alcohol that he just barely managed to keep from slopping over the sides of the glass. That hadn’t been what he was expecting, and he wasn’t _entirely_ sure that he was interested in Raina that way, but... it had been a really, _really_ long time since he’d gotten laid. And the longer his inebriated brain thought about it as he kissed the inarguably beautiful comms agent, the more appealing the rest of his body found the idea.

“Your place or mine?” she whispered huskily, leaning in to nip at his lower lip.

Clearing his throat, it took him a few seconds to answer. “I, ah, only live a couple blocks away?”

“Yours then,” Raina said, voice exceedingly cheerful, and reached out to grab his hand so she could drag him towards the elevator. “I just need to grab my things from my desk, first.”

When the doors opened and she tugged him inside after her, Fitz turned abruptly as he heard a female voice behind himself: “Oh.” 

Leaning against the elevator wall to steady himself, he looked up into a familiar pair of honey-brown eyes. As the doors slid closed, he found himself oddly unable to look away from Simmons, his cheeks heating up as Raina snuck up around his side so she could catch his lips in a searing kiss.

 

 _6 Feb. 2014  
__I know they say you’re not supposed to get involved with your co-workers, but – I’ve_ really _missed having sex. Good for morale and all anyway, innit?_

 

\------

 

For the first time in his twenty-eight years of life, Fitz found himself with a girlfriend. Not a three-dates-and-we’re-done kind of girlfriend, but an _actual_ girlfriend, who stayed with him for week upon week and seemed just as enamored of him as he was becoming of her. The fact that she wasn’t a scientist had been an initial concern, but, in Raina’s favor, at least she was genuinely interested in his work. If she didn’t understand something he wanted to talk through, she asked him to explain, and – even though it was tedious – at least she cared enough to ask. (Sometimes, in his weaker moments, he got fed up with have to over-explain all the time and just gave up. But he was getting better at hiding those moods.)

The rest of his life continued to make incremental improvements; even Turgeon had been relatively less reprehensible lately. Fitz’s work was going apace, and he’d received word that the grant money for his nonlethal weapons development would be available shortly. Weeks went by, and he settled into a new routine, using spare moments at the office to see Raina – and spending every night with her, too. Every so often, he caught word of some of the brilliant work Simmons was doing in the biochemical labs one floor above his own, but he contented himself with reading the official progress reports rather than satisfying his curiosity by going down there to see it in person. She surely didn’t want him hanging around anyway, even if he did sometimes catch her peering curiously through the wall-length windows of the engineering department.

Two and a half months passed, and, as was bound to happen eventually, the director decided to have another one of his unbearable shindigs. This time, he decided to send all the department heads (and certain other MVPs) on a weekend agency bonding getaway in the English countryside, which would culminate in an Easter-themed costume party. No one seemed to know quite how to argue with this, since no one had ever heard of an Easter-themed costume party, so most of SHIELD was just sort of begrudgingly going along with the idea and hoping he canceled at the last minute. Of course, he didn’t.

Normally, the idea of an entire weekend with his coworkers would send Fitz into a deeply apprehensive funk. He could barely stand most of his department at the best of times, let alone outside of working hours. The presence of his friends might help, but he’d feel like he was being watched by his supervisor the whole time, just waiting until Turgeon could make up some excuse to have him demoted or transferred to Timbuktu.

Knowing that Raina would be at his side for the whole weekend eased his apprehension considerably, however, especially once she booked a room for them to share. Going on a minibreak together seemed, to Fitz, to imply that their relationship was going very well indeed, and that they were moving a step past simply dating into being something more serious. Ignoring the niggling suspicion he had that they might not be suited to each other in the long term – aside from having what was, in his personal opinion, a pretty great sex life – he packed for their vacation with great gusto. Besides, even if he were being forced to attend Coulson’s ridiculous Easter-themed fancy dress party, at least he’d be there with his girlfriend by his side, and in a matching costume no less.

At least the weekend’s chosen location was breathtaking; a countryside mansion with lush, sprawling grounds and very posh rooms. It wasn’t exactly his idea of a perfect vacation, the hotel seeming a bit stuffy for his taste, but it would certainly do. As Raina slowed down the red sports rental car in the driveway, she lowered her sunglasses and raised an eyebrow.

“Fitz, you should have taken me here weeks ago,” she purred, and he let out a quiet guffaw. Aside from this not exactly being his cup of tea – beachside cabins or quaint country cottages both appealed to him more, just off the top of his head – he couldn’t afford the rooms here by a long shot. It was a damned good thing the weekend would be on SHIELD’s company card.

Evening had fallen by the time they finished settling into their room, and they had just enough time to make it to the SHIELD mini-banquet on time. As there was a wedding going on in the mansion that same day, the SHIELD contingent was sequestered in one quarter of the enormous building. Ostensibly, the evening’s event was intended to welcome a handful of new employees to the London office, some of whom were new to SHIELD and some of whom had just transferred from other cities. Once he and Raina arrived at the party, she flitted away to talk to her colleagues in comms and left Fitz to stand awkwardly at the entrance, wondering why he’d thought that having a girlfriend would mean that she’d stay by him the whole time.

Grabbing a stiff drink and a large plate of food, he managed to find Hunter, Trip, and Skye lounging at a table in the far corner of the patio without too much trouble. To be fair, he’d suspected that they wouldn’t be in the center of the schmoozing SHIELD hubbub, which he, too, had given a wide berth. For the next couple of hours, the four friends passed the time much like they did at the local pubs once or twice a week, shooting the shit and determinedly not talking about work.

“Y’all are so antisocial,” Trip griped, arriving at the table with drink refills for everyone. “It’s just a party –”

“A _work_ party,” Skye corrected, eyes narrowing as she spotted someone across the room. “I can, like, feel the men in black watching me, waiting for me to screw up so they can send me packing.” 

“It’s like trying to relax with your gran staring you down,” Hunter agreed, taking a swig of his beer. “And Bob’s talking to me again, so I hafta behave.”

“Sitting in a corner and sulking is your version of behaving?” Hunter jumped at the sound of Bobbi’s voice, and she emerged from the crowd to lean on the back of his chair.

“Yeah,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Least I’m not getting into trouble.”

“To be fair, you’re probably the only person I know who could get into trouble without lifting a finger,” Fitz mused into his pint, and Hunter shot him a glare.

“Actually, Fitz, I wanted to talk to you.” When he half-pointed at himself, mouth too full of food to respond, Bobbi nodded. “Yeah, I was just wondering if you’ve hung out with Simmons at all. I know you didn’t really get a chance to talk at the turkey curry buffet, but –” 

“Barking up the wrong tree, love,” Hunter muttered, dropping his eyes to his glass. “Fitz’s got a girlfriend. Comms bird.” 

Frowning, Bobbi trained her gaze on Fitz. “Oh. I didn’t know.”

Fitz waved off what seemed like an apology. “Been two months, going on three.” 

“Where is she, anyway?” Of all his friends, Trip had seemed the most wary of Raina from the get-go, but Fitz mostly attributed that to him being sore that Fitz was still refusing to talk to Simmons.

“Around,” Fitz answered vaguely, and he caught Skye wrinkling her nose in his peripheral vision. 

“Something about her strikes me as kinda off,” Skye said, giving him an apologetic glance. “Can’t put my finger on what.”

“Bit of a weirdo.” Hunter widened his eyes and waved his hands out in front of himself. “Very... intense.”

“Oi –” 

“Yeah, and honestly,” Trip started, leaning in, “I’d never have thought Raina was your type. Not brainy enough.”

“Wait, Raina?” Bobbi looked between the others and landed back on Fitz. “You’re dating Raina?”

“Yes, I _am_ dating her,” Fitz bit out, thoroughly annoyed with the turn of the conversation. “And you guys are being ruddy unfair –” 

“No, Fitz,” Bobbi interrupted, turning fully towards him, “I knew her in the New York office, she –”

“I don’t want to hear it,” he snapped, pushing back his chair and standing – although that still only put him at shoulder height with the spec-ops agent. “If you’re all done being asses about my dating life, yeah? I’m gonna go find my _girlfriend_.” Tossing his napkin onto the table and grabbing his glass, Fitz turned towards the crowd.

“Hey, mate, we didn’t mean anything....” Hunter started to call after him, but Trip shushed him.

“Let him go, man.”

Anger coursed through Fitz as he unsuccessfully hunted for Raina in the throng of people. For the first time in who-knew-how-long, he was genuinely happy, and in a relationship to boot, and his friends couldn’t even bring themselves to be subtle about their dislike of his girlfriend. It was almost as if they liked him being single and miserable, so they had someone to compare themselves more favorably against. He groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefingers and thumb. That was an unfair judgment of people about whom he cared very much. At least if they’d had these thoughts about Raina before, they’d been good about hiding it. He wasn’t sure exactly what about their comments had bothered him so much, aside from the obvious one of him not particularly liking to insult people when they weren’t there to defend themselves. Unless, perhaps, it was simply that they’d hit on some of the doubts and insecurities about his relationship with Raina that he’d felt himself.

When he couldn’t find her in the crowd, still annoyed enough with his friends that he didn’t feel like returning to their table, Fitz decided to wander through the grounds to clear his head. Keeping to the paths still lit by the building’s windows and doorway lamps, he shoved his free hand into his pocket and tried to sort through why he’d gotten so upset so quickly. He didn’t have time to come to a conclusion, however, as within a couple of minutes he stumbled upon something that distracted him completely.

Around one corner of the mansion was another patio, a much larger one with a pavilion-style roof. Neatly piled serving-wear adorning linen-covered tables along the edge of the dance floor suggested that wedding guests had, until recently, occupied this area. Instrumental music wafted from the mansion’s banquet room’s open doors, into which most of the party had evidently moved.

In the center of the patio stood the bride and groom, arms wrapped around each other and swaying gently to the quiet tune. That alone was not enough to stop Fitz in his tracks; the sight of Simmons standing at the nearby edge of some sculpted shrubbery, however, wine glass in hand as she watched the dancing couple, most definitely was. She stood in profile to him, expression pensive and, perhaps, a little wistful. A lock of brown hair twisted around her shoulder in the evening breeze. 

The only path forward went straight past her, and he hesitated, not wanting to either attract her attention or disrupt the newly married couple. Something drew her attention, though – either the scuff of his shoes, or his appearance in her peripheral vision – and she turned to look straight at him. Fitz ducked his head, praying to everything that was holy that she didn’t think he’d been standing there staring at her. 

“Oh, Fitz! I’m glad to see you,” Simmons said with a half-smile, and he looked instinctively up to meet her gaze.

“Sorry,” he said reflexively, fingers tightening around the top edge of his almost-finished pint. “Didn’t mean to, ah, y’know....”

“You’re not bothering me.” Having correctly guessed his hesitancy, she turned back to the dancers. “I’d actually been hoping to talk to you earlier, but you were, um, busy. With your friends.”

“Oh.” Fitz cleared his throat and took a few steps forward, crossing his arms as if to protect against what she might want to talk to him about. Would it be to criticize him for something? Considering that she hadn’t bothered to speak to him even once since she’d been in London, even though they worked only one floor apart, whatever she had to say here couldn’t possibly be good. “I mean, you coulda come over any time. S’not like we were talking about anything important.” 

“Yes, well...” she trailed off, waiting until he was standing next to her before she spoke again. “I finally had time to finish reading your work last week –” 

Frowning, he interrupted her. “Which work? I mean, paper?”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, then glanced over to make sure the married couple hadn’t been disturbed. “All of it, I mean.” Fitz stared mutely back at her, and she reached up to tuck loose hair behind one ear. “It’s been a long-term project of mine, when I wasn’t working on other things. SHIELD’s science and technology division has some of the most advanced R&D in the world, but it’s so... compartmentalized. There’s so little collaboration between the sections, be it biology or engineering or... or anything else.” She sighed, and finished off the last sip of her red wine. “It’s been something of a struggle to get anyone to agree with me on that. The agency’s bureaucracy can be so tedious.” 

“You’re telling me,” he agreed, “I feel like half my work is trying to cut through red tape.”

“It’s truly brilliant, though,” she said earnestly, drawing his eyes back to her face. “The work you’re doing? There isn’t anything like it in New York, or even the Los Angeles office. Those, um, those dog drones are –”

“Golden Retrievers,” he interrupted, and her face lit up as she laughed.

“Yes, sorry, Golden Retrievers. I read it all one right after the other, the names got a bit mixed up in my head.”

“Well, I’m glad someone did.” He gave her a wry tilt of the head. “I’m pretty sure no one else in the division has, to be honest. Explains why my grant money is caught in processing hell.”

“Oh dear,” she murmured, shaking her head. “I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t. Your papers are much more straightforward than so many other SHIELD proposals I see, getting all caught up in the technicalities, when –”

“– You have to make sure your work is useful,” he finished for her.

“Exactly!”

“Yeah, always try to think about that when I’m editing,” he said, feeling his cheeks heat up at the appraising way she was staring at him. “Not that it matters, I s’pose, when no one’s reading ‘em.”

“Oh, and I’m no one?”

“That’s not what I...” he protested, trailing off as he caught the teasing smile around her mouth. “Y’know what I meant.”

“Hopefully that’ll change soon,” she said encouragingly, reaching over to give his arm a quick pat.

A brief, comfortable silence fell upon them, the live band inside playing the chords of a new song, and Fitz tried to keep his cheeks from flushing. But this was the longest conversation he’d ever had with Jemma Simmons, and he hadn’t even needed to worry about starting off with something clever because, apparently, she already thought that he was, thanks to her having _voluntarily_ read the all of the papers and proposals he’d ever written. Beyond that, talking to her felt easy, more than it had ever been with anyone else; she hadn’t even minded when he’d finished her sentence. It was as if he’d stepped into bizarro world, where the brilliant, arrogant, holier-than-thou woman he’d assumed she was actually seemed to be brilliant, engaging, and... well, still a little arrogant, but to be fair she _was_ the smartest person he’d ever met, going all the way back to when they’d known each other at the Academy. Had he been wrong about her all this time?

After a few moments, Simmons turned to him, a determined look on her face and her fingers pressing hard into the side of her wine glass. “Fitz,” she said, “I was thinking that, if you were intere–” 

“Oh, Leeeeoooo!” 

Fitz closed his eyes on a wince; he hated when Raina called him that. As he turned, his girlfriend wrapped her arms around his torso, stretching up to press a drunken kiss to his cheek.

“I’ve been looking for youuuu,” she said in a sing-song voice, decidedly too loud for the peacefulness of the gardens. “Let’s go to bed, hmm?”

“Uh, yeah,” he muttered, mildly embarrassed that she’d said something like that in front of another person. “Alright.”

Raina made a little noise of agreement, and then slid her eyes over to where Simmons stood, head turned stiffly towards the dance floor that the married couple were just now vacating. “Oh, hello, Jemma. Enjoying the party?” 

A few moments of silence hung between the three of them, but this time it felt unbearably tense. 

“Quite,” Simmons replied at last, voice low and clipped. “I think I’ll head back now, actually.” When she slid her eyes over to meet his, he was surprised to see the pain that lingered there, beneath the reflected fairy lights of the pavilion. “Goodnight, Fitz.”

“Night, Simmons,” he answered reflexively, watching as she hurried away from them back along the cobblestone path.

“Ugh, seeing her brings back such awful memories,” Raina said, tucking her head beneath his chin. 

Blinking, Fitz automatically curled his arms around her shoulders, having completely forgotten what she’d told him about Simmons seducing Raina’s now-ex. That explained her awkwardness the second that Raina had appeared, he supposed, although the sadness that had lingered beneath her stiffness didn’t quite make sense. He had probably just been imagining things.

 

_19 April 2014  
_ _Had an actual conversation with Simmons at party. V. weird. Not sure what to think. Seemed happy to talk to me? But – [ILLEGIBLE SCRIBBLE]  
_ _Raina’s calling, gotta dash. (Balancing diary on knees on toilet is tricky.)_


	3. Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)

“You can’t just... just leave me here!” Fitz’s voice was high and just shy of panic as he paced along the end of the hotel bed on which Raina now sat. 

“You know I can’t do anything about it,” she said tiredly, rubbing one hand over her forehead. “Headquarters sent the call in themselves, and I’m the only agent anywhere near London that has any experience with code breaking. It’s not classified, but it’ll take _forever_. The New York agent will be at my apartment any minute, and –”

“But I can’t go to the party alone,” he pleaded, knowing that he was being ridiculous but not quite able to stop himself. “If you just came for half an hour –”

“I’m sorry, Fitz,” she said as she stood up, tone brokering no argument. “I have to.” Glancing over at the bedside table, she sighed and smoothed out the lines of her black-and-lavender flower patterned dress. “Now, actually.” With a low tutting noise, she reached up and patted his cheek. “You’ll be fine. You might even have fun!”

“I doubt it,” he muttered. “Who knows what new ways Coulson has up his sleeve to embarrass me. Other than forcing me to wear a rabbit costume.” 

“Peter Rabbit,” she corrected him, pressing a brief kiss to his lips. “And that was technically your idea.”

“Under duress,” he retorted, watching as she strode away to collect her overnight bag and purse. “We’re all required to wear some kind of fancy dress. And I was only okay with that when you were gonna be my carrot.” There was a distinct pout to his voice now, and he knew that he was probably only just shy of being unattractively whiny in front of his arguably very attractive girlfriend.

A filthy smile flashed across her face as she returned to him, hooking one arm around his shoulders. “Will it help if I promise that there will definitely be some form of, ah, carrot-rabbit action when you get back to London?”

His pulse jumped, and he gave her a faux-head tilt. “Maybe a little.”

“Good,” she said with a grin, and leaned in for one more peck on the lips. “I’ll let you know when I’ve finished, ‘kay?”

Fitz agreed, and walked Raina down to get the cab she’d called, having decided that she would leave him the car for the drive back. As he watched the clunky sedan circle around the mansion’s driveway, he exhaled. It wasn’t even noon and his stomach was already in knots.

 

 _20 Apr. 2014  
_ _Waiting for party to start. Had trouble hooking on cotton tail by myself. Is it wrong to hope that the building goes up in flames in the next ten mins? (I could do it myself without even leaving this room. Probably won’t. Don’t think I’d do well in jail.)_

 

\------

 

Naturally, things could always get worse, which they inevitably did. Determined to be brave, Fitz had gone straight through the lobby of the mansion to the gardens where the SHIELD Easter party was supposed to take place, his full-body, grey-furred bunny costume already on. When he arrived at the designated garden, however, he was struck with absolute horror as he realized that no one else was wearing a costume. From one person to the next, they all had on normal attire appropriate for an afternoon cocktail party at one’s place of employ.

For a few seconds, he hoped that maybe he’d just happened upon the wrong group of people... but then he spotted Skye, Hunter, and Trip staring at him from behind nearby shrubbery, and immediately prayed that lightning would strike him down where he stood. 

“Why,” he bit through a clenched jaw, having rushed over to them and crouched down behind said shrubbery, “is no one else in _bloody_ costume?!” 

“Did you not check your email yesterday?” 

Fitz gave Skye an incredulous look. “Of course I checked my email yesterday, I get it on my phone!”

“Your _work_ email,” Trip clarified, and Fitz felt the color drain from his face. “Coulson nixed the costumes yesterday morning. Something about a delayed fuzzy wuzzy shipment.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Fitz groaned, dropping his head into his hands and then rearing back when his rabbit ears nearly got caught in the underbrush. “Just shoot me, I cannot be the only person at this –”

“Fitz!” came the exuberant voice of the director, and Fitz swore quietly as Hunter dragged him up to his feet. Coulson, at least, looked ecstatic to see the costume, although to be fair he was also wearing a barbeque apron decorated with bunnies and multi-colored eggs. “You’re gonna be the mascot!”

“What.” Someone thumped him on the back at his bone-dry tone, but he didn’t have it in himself at the moment to be more accommodating.

“Figured at least one person would miss that email,” Coulson explained cheerfully, tugging his phone out of his pocket. “So that way the party’d have a mascot! C’mon, we’ll snap a selfie and then you can help me hand out burgers.”

Fitz’s nose wrinkled in spite of himself, and as the director strode into the dead-center of the party he turned back to his friends. “Burgers? At Easter?”

“Must be an American thing,” Hunter said sagely, but Trip shook his head. 

“Nah man, I think it’s a Coulson thing.”

“That makes more sense,” Skye agreed.

With a reluctant sigh, Fitz prepared to spend the next hour wishing he were dead as he handed out a bizarrely inappropriate Easter meal to his coworkers – all while decked out in a rabbit costume. On the plus side, he was the warmest person at the party, a full-length animal outfit being rather well suited to an April afternoon in England. 

Eventually, once all of the food had been given out and Fitz had catalogued all of the different ways he could end his suffering using only barbeque supplies, he was able to make his escape. As he snuck away from the food, he was almost distracted by watching Coulson demonstrate a new device that shelled an egg in the most disturbingly sexual way that Fitz had ever seen. Giving a shudder of horror, he turned around as quickly as possible. On his way to find his friends and grouse about there not being any alcohol available at today’s torturous work event, he nearly ran head-first into someone who had to be the world’s tallest man – or possibly an actual giant.

“Whoa there,” the man said, stepping back as Fitz shoved his rabbit ears off his head and around his neck. “Didn’t see you.”

“Ears throw off the sense of direction,” he deadpanned, gesturing at his costume. Although the other man gave a hearty laugh, Fitz himself was distracted by the familiar giggle of a woman he hadn’t initially noticed standing nearby. 

“But they’re so fetching,” Simmons teased, eyes shining as she looked him up and down. “Wouldn’t be the same without the ears.”

“Maybe,” Fitz grumped lightly, not able to be entirely bitter when Simmons was talking to him again, “but _I_ ’d be a lot happier.”

“The things we all have to do for our jobs,” the man said, letting out an empathetic chuckle and crossing his arms.

“Oh,” Simmons exclaimed, “I’m sorry, do you two know each other?” Fitz shook his head, and she gave a warm smile to the other man, to whom she had most likely just been speaking. “This is Alphonso Mackenzie. We used to work together in the New York office. Well, not together, exactly, but he’s one of our best agents. He’ll be in London on TDY for the next couple of months.”

“I specialize in mechanics,” he said, extending his ginormous hand out to shake Fitz’s. “And everyone calls me Mack.”

“And this,” Simmons continued before Fitz could say a word, “is Leopold Fitz. He’s one of the best engineers in the world, and he once ran naked through my backyard at Sci-Ops.”

Fitz’s mouth dropped open and his cheeks began to burn. For a second, he thought that maybe he was having some kind of aneurism or psychotic break, but when he blinked, nothing had changed. To his greatest confusion, the look on Simmons’ face was... well, not mean-spirited. If he didn’t still believe that she could only barely tolerate him in connection to his work, he might even think that she was flirting with him. 

Mack cleared his throat, finally getting Fitz to break her gaze. “Ah, I... guess SHIELD scientists aren’t, y’know – all lab coats all the time.” 

“Obviously not,” Fitz said drily, waving at his current outfit. “And, um, it’s just Fitz. Don’t call me Leopold unless I piss you off.” 

“That’s fair,” Mack laughed. “Always liked a good nickname.”

“You might be seeing a lot of each other, actually,” Simmons said brightly, seemingly moving straight past the fact that the last thing she’d said had been to confirm that she’d seen Fitz naked.

“Hopefully not _that_ much,” Mack returned drily, and Fitz wished, for the umpteenth time today, that the ground would swallow him whole. 

A distinct blush bloomed on her cheeks, and she spoke very quickly, words tumbling over each other. “You’ll be working together on the camouflage for the jets.”

“That’s, ah, good,” Fitz mumbled, unable to look either of them in the eye. “I’ve, ah, gotta find... some... people. Yeah. So, it was, uh, nice to meet you, Mack.”

“You, too, buddy,” Mack replied, an undisguised note of amusement lacing his voice as Fitz turned and shuffled away in the increasingly bedraggled bunny suit. 

At the edge of another loose gathering of SHIELD employees, he spotted Bobbi striding away with an empty glass.

“Hey,” he said, reaching out one hand to hover over her arm and stop her progress, “have you seen...?”

“The rest of the disaster quartet’s over there,” she said, pointing around the decorative shrub next to which they stood. 

“Thanks,” he breathed, probably a little too gratefully, as the sound of an indignant voice carried from around a vase-shaped bush.

“Hey!” Trip leaned around the bush, giving Bobbi a light glare. “Did you just call us ‘the disaster quartet’?”

Grinning, Bobbi shrugged. “I just call it like I see it.” 

“Maybe for these three,” Trip said, resulting in a chorus of affronted protests from Skye and Hunter, who peered around the shrubbery to join the fray alongside Fitz. “But I am _not_ a disaster.”

With a quick toss of her blonde hair, Bobbi crossed her arms over her chest. “I remember Belarus.”

Trip’s mouth dropped open, closed, opened again, and then he shook his head. “Go get your drink.” Smirking, Bobbi made a knowing hum and turned back around to continue on her journey to the drinks table.

“What happened in Belarus?” Skye’s expression was altogether too eager, and Fitz watched with wry amusement as Trip downed the last of his soda.

“I’ve never gotten the _whole_ story,” Hunter mused, earning himself a sharp punch in the arm. “But I think that drink with the golden flakes was involved.” 

“It’s always the Goldschläger,” Fitz added knowingly, shrugging when Trip shot him a glare. “Anyway, I’m gonna head out –”

“And leave all this fun?” Skye deadpanned.

“Coulson hasn’t even gotten the karaoke machine out yet,” Hunter said, tone actually a little sad.

Shaking his head in horror, Fitz turned back to Skye. “D’you still need a ride back to London?”

“Yes, thank you!” she said, tossing her cup skillfully into a nearby garbage bin. “I need to get my hair cut before my date tonight.” 

“Date –” Trip started to say, paused when she threw him a look, and then clamped his mouth shut.

“I’m sorta surprised they didn’t call you back to headquarters,” Fitz mused as the two of them navigated through the crowd and headed towards the mansion. “You’re one of their best analysts, I’d think they’d want you there, too.” 

Snatching a chocolate cupcake off the end of the dessert table, Skye raised both eyebrows in confusion. “What?”

“For the call that went out this morning? SHIELD needed Raina back at headquarters....” He trailed off as she continued to look blankly over at him while they passed through the gardens’ gate. “You didn’t get anything about that?” 

“Nope,” Skye replied, “and _I_ checked my work email this morning.” 

Fitz frowned, a niggle of doubt working its way into his chest about Raina’s reasons for needing to leave so suddenly. 

At least the drive back to London was fun – he refused to admit that he vastly preferred spending two and a half hours in a confined space laughing with Skye than with his girlfriend. Still, once he’d dropped his friend off at her flat, he couldn’t quite get rid of that nagging sense of discontent. So instead of returning the rental car right away, he drove it over to Raina’s.

Wrapping his jacket around himself to ward off a just-begun sprinkle of rain, Fitz jabbed his finger into the ground floor buzzer. No answer. He glanced over at the parked convertible; his mobile had died on the drive back, and he didn’t have a car charger with him. His laptop might have some battery left, but without WiFi.... With a sharp shiver, he squeezed himself even further beneath the barely-there overhang and pressed the buzzer two more times.

At last, static crackled to life on the speaker, and out came Raina’s breathless voice: “Who’s there?”

“Hey,” he sighed, “it’s freezing out here, can you let me up?” 

“Fitz!” The static disappeared for a few seconds, and he waited for the familiar buzz that didn’t come. “I’m still working, I told you –”

“No, I know, I know,” he said, giving his head a rueful shake even though she couldn’t see him. “I’ve just had a bloody awful day, and I... dunno, wanted to see you. For five minutes, I promise, then I’ll bugger off again.” 

The speaker stayed quiet for another few long seconds, and he shifted on his feet. They’d gone on a minibreak together this weekend, so he’d assumed they were at the point in their relationship where showing up unannounced wasn’t a big deal. Maybe he’d been wrong.

“Okay,” came Raina’s staticky voice. “Just for five minutes.” The building’s aggressive buzzer rang shrilly through the speaker and Fitz winced, yanking open the door as quickly as possible to get away from both the noise and the chill.

When Raina pulled open the door to her apartment, she looked appropriately tired, hair more mussed than usual and makeup mildly smudged. Not even bothering to enter the apartment, Fitz wrapped his arms around her, closing his eyes and already feeling calmer than he had all day. 

“Missed you,” he mumbled as a greeting, and she patted him on the shoulder. 

“So the barbeque went well, then,” she said wryly, shifting out of his hold and ushering him inside.

“It was a nightmare.” Fitz shook his head, glancing at the coat rack and then deciding he was cold enough that he didn’t want to take his off yet. After being wrapped warmly in the otherwise horrendous bunny suit, he’d been caught off-guard by the late spring chill. The apartment had high ceilings and white walls, and it usually made him a little small. After the discomfort of the rest of his day, however, he would much rather be here. “I wish you’d’ve been there, I couldn’t....”

An indistinct noise came from the direction of her bedroom, and he frowned, turning to her. “What’s that?”

Rolling her eyes, she waved a hand indistinctly behind her. “Oh, I was having trouble with the shower when I got home, it’s probably the plumbing.” 

Fitz watched her as she sashayed towards the living room, and as he opened his mouth he heard something else – the distinct sound of creaking hinges. 

“Is there someone else here?”

“Oh, _please_ ,” she groaned, turning as he walked backwards towards the bedroom. “You’re being paranoid!”

Then a thought struck him, and he twisted around so he could see the coat rack he’d ignored on his way in. On the top of the coats hung a dark navy coat far, far too large to be Raina’s.

Giving her a look somewhere between anger and disbelief, Fitz turned and stomped straight to her bedroom, threw her door open, and was confronted with a man wearing only a towel. Halfway through rubbing his hair dry, the Adonis in his girlfriend’s bedroom seemed almost entirely unconcerned as both Fitz and Raina came rushing in. 

“Fitz,” Raina said, flustered in a way he’d never seen her before, “this is, ah, Grant Ward. From the New York office.”

“So _that’s_ what you were analyzing?!” Fitz’s voice was higher than normal, and he threw one hand out in the direction of the man’s washboard abs.

Glancing between the two others, Ward arched one impeccable eyebrow. “I thought you said he was cute.” 

With a noise of disgust, Fitz pushed past his now-most-definitely-ex-girlfriend. “Screw you, Raina.”

“Wait, Fitz –”

He whipped around just before he got to the entryway, staring at where Raina had chased halfheartedly after him. “For what?” 

As she looked back at him, mental wheels spinning, he could practically hear the comms specialist in her head trying to reason out what angle would work best with him. Had that been what she was doing all this time – _working him_ , to some personal or professional advantage that he had yet to understand?

Fitz let out a harsh, dismissive sound, and turned to the doorway. “I thought so.” A sharp ache taking root in his chest, he slammed the door as he walked out of Raina’s life for good.

 

 _(typed on mobile at approx. 19:45) 20 Apr. 2014  
_ _Wish I’d set the bloody mansion on fire after all._

 

\------

 

“He was verrry tall,” Fitz slurred, holding up his scotch glass to point at Trip. “And he _might_ have even more abs than you.”

“Impossible,” Skye said authoritatively.

Hunter glared at all of them. “What about me? I have great abs.” 

“Trip’s are better,” Bobbi said as she passed them by, on her way to where she was having drinks with some of her female spec-ops friends at a table by the pub’s window. 

“Oi!” Pushing out of his stool, Hunter made a beeline after his ex-or-sometimes-wife. “That’s not what you were sayin’ last night –!”

Ignoring the two of them, Fitz went back to squinting at the increasingly blurry shape of his half-filled glass. “I think he was shinin'. Like _actually_ glistening. Do humans normallyactually glisten? Is that a thing?”

“It can be.” Skye shrugged, sipping at her pint. “Buddy, you’re torturing yourself over there.” 

“Yeah,” Trip agreed, grabbing his shoulder in a move that was probably supposed to be bracing and not make Fitz’s vision tilt sideways. He wasn’t sure how many drinks he’d had by this point, but he did remember a waitress having to come and clear away all the empties on their table – and he’d gotten to the pub a good half an hour before everyone else had arrived, summoned by his emergency text. “Seriously man, try to think about something else –”

“Like what?” He tried to sit up straighter while still leaning on the unsteady table, and almost managed it. “The fact that the one serious girlfriend I’ve ever had was actually sleepin’ with someone else the whole time?” 

“You don’t know that –” Skye started, but he steamrolled right over her.

“The fact that I’m a literal bloody genius and I cannot get the funds to work on projects that would _literally_ save lives?”

“Might be using the word ‘literal’ a bit too much,” Trip teased halfheartedly.

“Or the fact that I’m pretty _fucking_ sure that I am never, ever gonna find someone who just, I dunno, understands me? Who I don’t have to pretend around, or explain things to, who just... just is with me, and I’m with them, and it’s like the rightest thing in the bloody cosmos, y’know? That this person doesn’t exist and won’t, because I’m not lucky enough for somethin’ like that. They’re just not out there. And I cannot fuckin’ stand it.” He slammed his glass down on the table, watching as the amber liquid spilled over his hand seemingly in slow motion. 

Neither of his friends said anything, the cheerful rattling of the surprisingly busy pub muted underneath their silence. No one was used to Fitz opening up like that, least of all himself, and even in his inebriated state he wasn’t sure where to go from here. What do you say when you’re pretty sure that you’re going to spend the rest of your life alone?

“Oh, and _then_ – then there’s Simmons!” He could see Trip and Skye give each other a significant look, but plowed on past it. “I dunno _what_ she was playin’ at this weekend, but it was like she’s been bodysnatched or somethin’, because all of a sudden she’s talkin’ to me, and lookin’ at me with those, _fuck me_ , the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen – did you warn me ‘bout those Trip? They’re like a weapon of me destruction, I swear –”

“Think I actually did mention her eyes,” Trip muttered, stifling a laugh. 

Fitz let out a long sigh, drifting off briefly as he remembered his and Simmons’ brief talk the night before. It had probably been the best part of his weekend, even before he’d found the most handsome man alive in his girlfriend’s apartment. 

“ _That_ ’s never gonna happen again,” he mumbled to himself, letting his head thunk down onto one of his arms. “Too bad. She’d probably be really good with my gun.” Skye snorted, and he tilted his head to glare at her. “Not _my_ gun – my equipment. My weaponry. My – my... oh, the bloody Night-Night Gun, y’know what I meant!” 

Blocking his hand where he’d reached weakly out to flap it at her, she managed to use that leverage to tug him out of the chair and wrap his arm around her shoulders in one smooth motion. “Oooookay, equipment boy, I think it’s time for you to go home.”

“I dun wanna go home,” he whined, letting Trip reach down to support his other side since his legs weren’t cooperating at the moment. “I wanna science.”

“Not much science happening in here.” Trip fumbled for a few pounds to toss onto the bar, and then set the three of them in motion.

“Bet Simmons is sciencing,” Fitz declared. “Very, very pretty science. Science I’d really like to get my bare hands on –”

“Fitz,” Skye admonished, hip-checking him and causing him to stumble over the threshold of the bar. 

“I don’t wanna go home,” he repeated, swaying as Trip let go of his left side to try to flag down a cab. “There’s no one there.”

“Aw, buddy.” Skye hoisted him up so he was leaning on her more securely, the ends of her newly cut hair feathering against his ear. “You’ve just gotta choose something else to focus on, ‘kay? Not your ex.”

“I choose whiskey,” he said immediately, eliciting a small laugh from his friend. A cheesy 90’s song echoed out of the pub as a small gathering entered the building behind them, and he let out a dry snort. “And Chaka Kahn!”

“Maybe don’t tell Hunter that,” Trip deadpanned as he jogged back over to them, having just hailed a cab. “He hates Chaka Kahn.” 

“Me, too.” Thinking about how he was probably going to end up falling asleep on his couch, fully dressed, while listening to sad.FM yet again, Fitz heaved a deep sigh as his friends dragged him towards the cab.

 

 _ ~~20~~ 21 Apr. 2014_  
_easter hols are SHIT. who really likes bunnies anyway? poopers w/ scarily strong teeth.  
_ _Raina’s gone. not surprised. out of my league. I counted & I definitely dont have enough abs._

 

\------

 

The next morning, Fitz was rudely awoken when his couch wasn’t wide enough to accommodate him rolling onto his stomach and he fell flat onto his face on the floor. Groaning, he struggled to remember the series of events that had led him to this particular new low. The night came back to him in bits and pieces, although he vividly remembered the ten minutes in Raina’s apartment that had prompted him to the aforementioned self-pitying debauchery.

Unwilling to move and risk worsening the splitting headache with which he’d already been gifted, he took stock of his life. Based on the sunlight he could see through the windows of his flat, he was almost certainly late to work. Not that anyone would notice, frankly, since he didn’t have a partner and his boss was always happier when they didn’t see each other. Filled with a surge of unwarranted confidence, he made the executive decision to call in for a work-at-home day. If Turgeon didn’t like it, he could suck it.

Eugh. Or preferably not.

That decided, Fitz closed his eyes and snuggled a little further into his carpet. He could deal with everything else once he stopped seeing double.

 

 _21 Apr. 2014  
_ _Tomorrow, I’m going to turn over a new leaf. Can you have New Easter’s Resolutions?_


	4. Dreamsome

When Fitz arrived at work the day after his extended hangover recovery session, the first thing he did was march right up to his supervisor and demand the grant money he’d been allotted. Having expected a big argument, he was thrown off by Turgeon’s dismissive acceptance and instruction to have at least two-dozen working prototypes completed within seven months. Perhaps being more assertive at work was what Fitz should have been doing all along.

The next two months flew by, and he found that working himself to the point of exhaustion was an excellent way to dull his heartbreak. Avoiding Raina was easy, since she worked in a completely different section of the building, and she didn’t come by the laboratories once. For the first couple of weeks, he wondered if she’d try to come change his mind, but she never did. In fact, between his work on the nonlethal weaponry and the director-ordered prioritization of the SHIELD fleet’s camouflaging, he was so busy that he barely spoke to any other scientists (aside from Mack) at all.

One evening, he zipped into his lab to grab something before heading home and was surprised to see Turgeon, Raina, and Ward all gathered around one of the tables. Something hard settled into his stomach, and when he swallowed he thought he tasted the faint hint of bile. Seeing his ex standing next to the man she’d been sleeping with was not something he’d anticipated needed to prepare himself for today.

“What’re you doing here?” His voice was gruff as he strode around them, shedding his lab coat as he went, unsure to whom his question was directed even as he asked it.

“Agent Fitz,” Turgeon muttered, not even glancing up from his clipboard. “Agents Ward and [Hystrix](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Hystrix) were just coming to collect some of your designs to bring to the New York office for additional consulting.”

Dropping his lab coat on the ground, Fitz turned to stare, slack-jawed, at the three of them. “You _what?!_ ” 

“You can’t do everything in one lab, Agent Fitz,” Ward said, tucking his sunglasses into the slick black jacket of his suit. “Having more eyes on the prize will get us there faster.”

“And if the New York office finishes R&D first, it’ll look better for you during next month’s annual budget proposals,” Fitz said slowly, turning to Raina, who just stared steadily back at him. “That’s why, isn’t it? And you always wanted to talk about what I was working on.”

“It’s good for every high level agent to know what the labs are working on,” she answered smoothly, although at least she had the grace to be unable to hold his gaze. 

“Well, you can’t have ‘em,” he bit out, scooting around the table to snatch the folder out of Ward’s hands and put himself in between them and the table. “You want my designs, you’re gonna have to get the Director himself in here.” 

“I approved it,” Turgeon started to say, but Fitz talked over him.

“You heard me, _Kenneth_ , the Director – you may be my boss, but you don’t own my bloody inventions.”

Turgeon glared back at him, beady eyes glinting darkly in the lab’s fluorescent lights, and then turned to sweep out of the lab without another word. Straightening his suit, Ward followed the other man out, but Raina lingered by the glass door.

“Fitz....” 

“Save it, Raina.” All the hurt and anger that he’d been repressing for the past month felt like it was seconds away from bubbling to the surface, and he desperately didn’t want her to be there when it did. Avoiding her gaze, he started packing away his day’s work and the design folders they’d disarranged. 

“You’re a nice guy, Fitz,” she said at last, “you should find a nice girl.”

He let out a dismissive snort. “Yeah, and that obviously isn’t you.”

The sound of low laughter surprised him, but when he glanced up she was already disappearing down the hallway. With a frustrated grunt, he threw his lab coat as hard across the room as he could, the cloth unfolding and billowing unsatisfactorily to the ground only a few feet away. 

Panting in repressed anger, Fitz jumped almost a foot in the air when someone cleared their throat in the doorway. There stood Simmons, the pity hovering distinctly around her expression only ratcheting up his annoyance. Despite her odd almost-flirtation over Easter weekend, nothing had ever come of it between them, and he had barely even seen her as much as anyone else while he’d been living in his work-induced hermitage. 

“Sorry,” she said, expression hovering oddly between discomfort and interest. “I don’t mean to intrude –”

“I’m about to leave, actually,” he interrupted brusquely, reaching for his blazer and sweeping past her out the door. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

“Oh,” she squeaked, apparently flustered by him brushing so closely past her to get through the door. “Yes, oh – well, no, I... will be leaving for New York tomorrow. Not permanently, but they need me back there periodically to consult on certain projects. Since SHIELD is already sending a plane tomorrow, I’m hopping aboard.”

“That’ll be a fun plane ride,” he quipped, continuing through the corridors and almost successfully not turning around to see if she was following him. Which he didn’t want her to be doing anyway, because if he was going to sink into a real funk about Raina he’d rather do it at home, alone, and with a bottle of hard liquor, thankyouverymuch. 

“At least it’ll be free,” she chirped from his right, having apparently caught his stride without being deterred by his prickliness. They strode down the corridor in silence for a few moments, with Fitz wondering why she’d chosen that very inconvenient moment to finally pay him a visit. “So,” she said hesitantly, “it didn’t work out with Raina?” 

Clenching his jaw, Fitz bypassed the security guards, wondering how long she’d keep following him. “No, it didn’t.” 

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

He released an incredulous huff and turned around to face Simmons head on, propping his hands on his hips. “Look, are you after something? Because, Christ, I dunno what it is but somehow I always end up feeling completely ridiculous every time I see you.” Rubbing the bridge of his nose between his forefingers and thumb, he exhaled. “Nevermind, sorry. Just... I have to go –” 

“No!” Her hand wrapped tightly around his wrist and he froze. With distinct confusion etched into his expression, Fitz glanced up at where she was staring nervously back at him. “Look, um, I’m sorry, if I’ve been....”

“What?”

Simmons twisted her mouth to the side, and she dropped his hand before continuing. “I don’t think you’re ridiculous at all. I mean, there _are_ elements of the ridiculous about you,” she said, rambling a little as she continued. “Your friends are pretty interesting. And you really are an appallingly bad public speaker.” Wrinkling her nose, she gave her head a small shake. “I realize that when we saw each other at the turkey curry buffet I was unforgivably rude, no matter who I thought I was talking about, but the thing is, um... what I’m trying to say,” she continued, taking half a step forward, “very inarticulately, is that, in fact, perhaps despite appearances... I like you very much.”

“Right,” he deadpanned, “other than the vulgar friends and the verbal diarrhea –”

“No,” Simmons interrupted firmly, “I like you very much. Just as you are.”

Something about her tone or the determination written so clearly on her face stopped him from coming up with another wry retort, and he just stared back at her. His cheeks began to warm up at the steady way she looked at him; even if she had been hesitant at first, she didn’t seem to show any sign of wanting to take back what she’d said.

Just as he thought to himself that he had no idea how to respond, a junior scientist called out for Simmons back beyond the security barrier. After she’d listened to the younger woman, she assured her that she’d be right back, and then sighed. Giving Fitz a glance, her teeth worrying at her lip, she shrugged into a half smile and hurried back into the main part of the building.

As he watched her disappear around the corner, he realized that he hadn’t said a single word in response – and she’d never told him why she’d come into his lab in the first place. He took one step forward, turned back towards the exit, twisted around again to head to the labs, and then, with a frustrated huff, slung on his blazer and strode out into the summer evening.

 

 _(typed on mobile at approx. 17:20) 14 June 2014  
__Simmons likes me as I am... even though each clever thing I plan to say to her gets thrown out the window. How did_ that _happen? Need urgent consult; will update later._

 

\------

 

Within half an hour, Fitz had successfully gathered Skye, Trip, and Hunter at their usual pub table and regaled them with the most recent, odd turn his life had taken. (The Simmons part, that is, since he couldn’t give a whit about Raina and her brain games at this particular moment.) In response, Trip looked smug, Skye looked shocked, and Hunter looked confused (although, in the case of the latter, that wasn’t much different from his normal expression).

Trip nodded and took a sip of his pint in a way that made him look distinctly like a proud father. “Just as you are, huh?”

Skye, on the other hand, seemed to be having more trouble processing the sentiment. “Not thinner?” she tried, doodling in the condensation of her glass. “Not taller?” 

“Not with a bigger dick?” Hunter added, and Trip whacked him on the back of the head. “What?? She can give suggestions and I can’t?”

“Simmons didn’t mention that,” Fitz muttered into his own pint, flushing starkly at the thought that, whatever Simmons’ thoughts were, she _had_ already seen him naked. And considering the fact that she’d seemingly just declared her interest in him, that possibly boded well.

“So call her and give her a chance to mention it, mate,” Hunter said with a smirk, ducking backwards as both Skye and Trip tried to hit him this time.

“Didn’t you say that she hated you?” Skye asked, leaning back against her chair.

“Clearly,” Trip said, tone dry as the gin and tonic he was drinking, “Fitz is an idiot.”

“Hey!” 

Trip just rolled his eyes at Fitz’s protest. “C’mon man, I’ve been telling you for _ages_ she didn’t hate you. Either you’re an idiot or you don’t listen to anyone below an IQ of 100.”

“That would actually explain a lot about him,” Hunter mused, tapping one finger against the table, and Fitz hunched over his drink.

“Can we stop talking about me?” 

“You’re the one who called an emergency meeting,” Skye pointed out cheerfully. “Not that I ever really _need_ an excuse to drink before six on a weeknight.”

“So,” Trip said, leaning forward on his elbows, “what’re you gonna do about it?”

Staring at the last, shimmering millimeter of beer left in his glass, Fitz heaved a sigh. “For now? Get another drink.”

 

 _14 June 2014_  
_“Just as you are.”  
_ _I don’t think *I* even like me as I am. What does she mean? Is the whole genius thing a ruse and she’s secretly crazy? (Scratch that; she could be both.)_

 

\------

 

Annoyingly, Fitz couldn’t actually do anything about what Simmons had said for a long, long time. With her away on temporary duty in New York, cleaning up some mysterious chemical mess that their offices had stumbled upon, there was no real way to go about testing the waters for asking her out to dinner. Or to tea. Or to see a documentary. Or to come back to his place and _not_ watch a documentary. (Not that he’d been considering all the possible ways he and Simmons could spend time together, mind you.)

After a couple of weeks, however, he got frustrated with spending all of his time wondering about her and being unable to do _anything_ , so he sent her a tentative email over their work accounts. It was inconsequential on the surface, just asking an inane question about the biochemical labs’ progress on a healing salve, but he carefully included an opening for her to start a more personal conversation, should she wish to do so – or to shunt his query off to a junior agent. (It took him approximately five days and two consults with Skye to finalize the wording.)

Despite the time difference, he received a little ping back almost immediately, with her cheerfully lamenting her busy schedule and congratulating him on the successful completion of camouflaging the SHIELD fleet. He immediately demurred, crediting Mack with having given him the key insight needed to finish the project, and thanking her for introducing them, despite his ridiculous outfit at the time. Her answer to that made him flush bright pink, as she began it by saying that the costume really wasn’t _that_ ridiculous – particularly as she had been rather fond of his tail. The way she’d phrased it and the smiley face she’d included after... well, that _had_ to be flirting, didn’t it? People who intended on remaining colleagues or simply friends did not go around talking about the other person’s _tail_.

So it went for the next month after month after month, with them sending mostly professional but occasionally flirty emails back and forth while Simmons was stuck consulting in New York. In theory, this behavior was very much inappropriate for an office environment, especially since they were using their work accounts. (And especially since he’d done the math for their time zones and concluded that, at least some of the time, she was sending him emails while in bed. Which just elicited all kinds of images totally inappropriate for someone that he would genuinely be thrilled to simply befriend, if it weren’t for the fact that she was decidedly flirting with him.) 

Fitz’s life narrowed to trying every prototype for his Night-Night Gun possible and responding to her messages as quickly as he could, often finding himself standing in the lab grinning over an email rather than doing his work. Each time she was back in London, they seemed to miss each other by a hair – either she was there so briefly he couldn’t catch her, or he was away visiting his mum for her birthday, and on and on. The latter time, he returned to his lab to find a small post-it note directing him to the shared SHIELD staff kitchen’s refrigerator, inside which he found the greatest treasure he could imagine: His favorite sandwich – prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella with just a hint of pesto aioli – handmade by Simmons. He’d mentioned it offhandedly in an email as something his favorite aunt made that he almost never got to eat, so her remembrance of it was a sweet and thoughtful surprise. Best of all, though, was the simple note written in black marker on brown cardstock that accompanied the sandwich: “For Fitz. Love, Jemma.”

 

 _23 Nov. 2014_  
_[[BROWN CARDSTOCK WITH HANDWRITTEN NOTE TAPED TO PAGE]]_  
_~~Simmons~~ Jemma left this with my favorite sandwich today. Has she ever mentioned that she’s the best bloody cook in the world, in addition to being a genius? And beautiful, and funny, and kind, and – let’s stop it there. Could go on for ages what I like about her, but I’ve got other stuff to write about today. Like her homemade pesto aioli._

 

\------

 

By the time December rolled around, Fitz felt like he and Jemma had known each other for years, and it got to the point where he could half-anticipate some of her return emails. Somehow, though, they’d managed to have all those conversations and he still felt like he hardly knew her at all – as if a million questions wouldn’t be enough for him to parse out the fascinating mystery that was Jemma Simmons. All he wanted to do was talk to her about everything under the sun, and fill in the many personal details about her that their conversations hadn’t managed to touch upon. 

Of course, just when Jemma returned to London (hopefully permanently this time), Fitz’s entire professional career was on the brink of a catastrophic meltdown.

Despite rigorous testing and a hundred different redesigns (literally), the bullets for the Night-Night Gun continued to break apart in the chamber. With any normal project, at this point he would have to prepare a presentation about why he needed to call in an expert toxicology consult and request enough funding to continue research for however much longer he thought the product needed. In this case, however, he’d already passed SHIELD’s required deadline, and on top of that they needed the guns to work for a massive operation scheduled to take off in thirty hours. SHIELD’s usual arsenal wasn’t an option this time because they would be going out into a public location where mass civilian casualties were a real possibility. The spec-ops agents were relying on having another reliable way of taking down their opponents that couldn’t result in fatal friendly fire, and Fitz was on the verge of panic that he wouldn’t be able to deliver.

“ _What_ are you doing?!” His voice was too loud, and the frazzled junior scientist he’d just verbally accosted jumped into the air.

The young woman whose name he couldn’t remember swallowed and held out the metal vat she carried, hands shaking slightly under its weight. “Going to dispose of the most recent formula...?”

“Are you _bloody_ insane?! That’s the closest we’ve gotten, and I have,” he snapped, glancing down at his gold watch, “twenty-nine hours and six minutes to perfect it. Go put it over there and try not to destroy anything, eh?” 

With a slight clench of her jaw, the scientist did a quick about-face. Rubbing one hand over his forehead, Fitz wondered dimly if it was too late for him to change careers and become a fireman.

Girls liked firemen, right?

But that job still meant he'd be responsible for saving peoples’ lives.

Drat. 

“Is this a bad time...? Again?”

Fitz whirled around at the sound of a voice he hadn’t heard for months: Standing in the doorway to his lab was Jemma, her hair hanging in loose waves down to her shoulders and a particularly fetching white top hugging her torso in ways that really shouldn’t be so distracting. She smiled as their eyes met, her hands curling at her sides as if she was itching to take hold of something (or someone) else instead. 

“Jemma,” he breathed, instantly forgetting all the variations of what he’d planned on saying the first time he saw her again. “You like me just the way I am.”

Her smile widened, pink just barely fading into her cheeks as he fought the urge to bang his head against a nearby lab table. After a few seconds of them just looking at each other in silence, she managed to break it first, clearing her throat and thankfully ignoring the bright blush that now graced his own skin.

“Are you having problems with the nonlethal projectile delivery systems?”

“Yeah,” he sighed, slumping forward onto an adjacent table, grateful for any change of topic after his newest blunder. “Either it’s the molds or the formula inside – can’t get it strong enough to knock anyone out, or –”

“It’s too strong and it would kill the target,” she finished for him, sidling up along his side and peering at the specs listed on a nearby tablet. “I have an idea.” 

Fitz looked around at her, eyebrows raised. “Seriously?” 

“Yes,” she murmured, reaching out to tap at the specs. “I’ve been reading up on the project –”

“What,” he said, bristling, “you didn’t think I could manage it?” 

Jemma glanced up at him, her squint of concentration softening. “No, not at all. Your work methodology is truly fascinating, but... really, Fitz, when was the last time you slept?” 

Blinking, he tried searching his brain for any memory of the last time he’d run back to his apartment for a rest. He was able to conjure up a vague memory of jotting down a note in his diary about having run out of peanut butter. “The seventeenth?” 

“That was two days ago!” Jemma clicked her tongue in reprimand, elbowing him aside to pull the tablet closer. “You’ve been pushing yourself too hard, it’s no wonder you missed this.” With a few taps, she brought up one of his many schematics for the bullets and then laid her own smartphone next to it. “If you combine that design with this formula –”

“Hang on,” he interrupted, eyes flying over the text on her phone. “Where’d you get this?”

“Oh, I’ve been working on it in New York.” When he stared incredulously at her, she just shrugged. “I’m quite good with dendrotoxins, and I’ve had a bit of free time to experiment with them while I’ve been back there. I think this formula should suit your needs nicely, making the bullets non-lethal –” 

“With heavy-stopping power,” he continued for her, following her train of thought, “and’ll break up under the subcutaneous tissue –”

“And those molds will allow them to be hollow,” she finished, “and hold _more_ than point-one microliter of dendrotoxin.” 

“Absolutely brilliant,” he breathed, having finished reading the formula and suddenly finding himself with the overwhelming urge to lift Jemma up off the floor and kiss her soundly right then and there. Darting his tongue out to wet his lips as he flicked his eyes down to her mouth, he realized he was actually giving the idea consideration... and then reminded himself that he hadn’t slept in well over a full day. Anything he thought about doing until he managed to get a good night’s sleep was probably a bad idea.

Breaking her gaze, he propped both hands on the table and peered down at the two sets of specs. With a small huff of breath, Jemma leaned forward next to him, and when he gave a surreptitious glance in her direction he would swear that she looked disappointed about something.

“Right,” he muttered, “so what we need to do –”

“I’ll start working on a new batch of the formula,” she interrupted, reaching out for a spare lab coat someone else had flung over a nearby chair. “You –”

“Start creating new specs for the 3D printer,” he finished. “Then we can –”

“Test four batches within the next three hours –” 

“Which should be enough of a sample size –”

“To determine their reliability –”

“Before we begin mass production.”

“And I had some thoughts about an aerosol version as well,” she added, snapping on a pair of black latex gloves. “If we have time.”

“Even better,” he said, sliding a new set of goggles up onto his head for easy access later. When he whirled around to run to his computer, he almost crashed right into Jemma, needing to reach out to grab her shoulders and keep them both from knocking something over. He realized he was breathing far too heavily for what had been a work conversation, but he couldn’t quite shake the impression that their brainstorm session had been the best fifteen minutes of foreplay he’d ever experienced.

And then he wanted to smack himself in the face, because he was being a _complete_ letch around someone who, within only a few minutes, had already proven herself the best lab partner he’d ever had the good fortune to meet, let alone collaborate with. (Even if she had technically planted said letcherous thoughts in his head by flirting shamelessly via SHIELD’s interoffice email system.) Until they had completed this weapons order and she made it very, very clear that romance (or, at the least, an enthusiastic shag) was what she wanted from him, Fitz promised himself that he wouldn’t think any further unprofessional thoughts about her.

“Meet back here in half an hour?” He forced himself to not let his gaze linger on her latex glove-clad hands.

Nodding as he stepped away, Jemma tucked loose hair behind her ear. “Half an hour,” she repeated, not quite meeting his eyes as she hurried over to the side of the lab dedicated to the chemical component of the weapons development.

During the following twenty-eight hours and forty-seven minutes, Fitz and Jemma worked frantically around and with each other to make the most consistently effective version of the Night-Night Gun possible. They were tossing ideas across the lab, ordering around the junior scientists in unison, and leaning over each other’s shoulders as they each made progress on their respective tasks.

While the functional design was in production, Jemma ordered him to take a nap – she reasoned that he sorely needed it, and the printer was happily working away without his supervision. Although he grumbled a little about being ordered around in his own lab, he’d started to see double a few minutes prior and he chose to obediently curl up on a lab bench in the back of the room.

After an hour, his alarm jolted him awake again, and he was greeted with Jemma’s face mere inches from his own. She’d clearly sat down next to the adjacent cupboard to take her own nap, although now she was waking slowly up. Blinking sleepily over at him, she gifted him with a sweet little smile that made his pulse speed up. (He took a second to thank everything that was holy that he’d managed to _not_ roll off the bench at the alarm’s sudden blare.)

“Hello,” she murmured, reaching her arms up to stretch her back. “Not exactly how I imagined us waking up together for the first time, but I suppose I’ll take it.” Fitz’s eyes widened; that had _definitely_ been flirting. “Come on, the next dozen should be ready for inspection now.”

Scrambling to her feet, she waved one hand down for him to take. With a yawn he couldn’t quite stifle, Fitz tilted himself off the bench and let her pull him up. The last few hours of work would be grueling, but with the image her flirtation had conjured up (long, wavy brown hair spread across white sheets, soft skin, pink lips parted just so) he thought he could make himself power through.

The spec-ops agents arrived en masse to check out the new weaponry, impressed murmurs spreading through the room like wildfire. When Melinda May, one of SHIELD’s most esteemed agents and the Director’s right hand, stepped up to be allowed a test shot, Fitz was pretty certain his entire career hinged on the following few seconds of his life. As Jemma stood beside him, the urge to take her hand was nearly overwhelming.

After carefully considering which firearm to select, May lifted one to eye-level and turned in a slow circle, a few of the more junior agents flinching as she passed them by. Without warning, she fired two clean shots into Turgeon’s back, and Fitz watched in shocked glee as his boss went down like a sack of moldy potatoes. A nearby agent bent over the prone supervisor to check his pulse, and, when he raised a thumbs-up, May nodded.

“I’ll take two,” she said, tucking her already-claimed pistol into her personal thigh-holster, and that was that. The rest of the agents swarmed the scientists, eager to select their new toys. 

At long last, after Fitz had waved goodbye to Trip as he followed Skye and Hunter out with the others, he sagged against a lab table.

“You should go home,” Jemma said gently, appearing at his side like a guardian angel. “They won’t even get to the site for a few hours at least, and you deserve the rest.”

“You’ve been here nearly as long as I have, now,” he argued. “You should rest, too.”

“Oh,” she replied with a laugh, “I intend to. I just wanted to make sure you were going home, first. So,” she said, drawing out the word as she nudged his arm, “bed?”

Fitz swallowed, eyes drawn by the way she was nibbling at her bottom lip. _Yes, I think we should both go to my bed, where we can shag until neither of us can see straight and_ then _I can sleep for the next week and a half._

A yawn stuttered out of his mouth, and he shook his head into a brief grin. “Yeah, bed. Will you be here later?”

“Yeah.” With a brief smile, she dropped her eyes briefly to the ground, and for a brief, shining moment he thought she might actually be about to proposition him. “Goodnight, Fitz.” She patted his arm warmly, and then began to shrug out of her lab coat as she strode to the exit.

“Night, Jemma,” he called after her, earning him another little nod that made something flutter in the pit of his stomach. Just as he was about to wave at her, he caught himself and then had to resist the urge to bang his head gently against the lab table. For God’s sake, he was an adult man, and he was acting like a young boy with a schoolyard crush. (The similarities, he thought to himself as he bundled up and walked the three blocks to his flat, were almost alarmingly similar.)

 

 _20 Dec. 2014_  
_Spent all day working with Jemma. Have never been as turned on by a lab coat in my life._  
_Should be sleeping, can’t stop thinking about her. Not_ that _kind of thinking – well, now that, too – just about how well we get on. She came up with a brilliant new name for the Night-Night Gun, too – I.C.E.R.s! How brilliant is that?_  
_Hope she stays in London forever. Can’t wait to see her later._


	5. Out of Reach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, if you've been wondering if this fic was going to really fulfill its promise of crack... here it is. Don't say I didn't warn you. ;-)

After a few hours of sleep and a shower, Fitz felt vastly more human and ready to tend to the rest of his on-base duties during the course of the field mission. As he snacked on day-old crisps before leaving his flat, however, he was struck with a fit of inspiration for how to celebrate a job successfully done. (Assuming the weapons all functioned and the mission went well, that is.) On his way back to the SHIELD facility, he stopped by a Sainsbury’s and picked up the ingredients for a nice meal. His friends would probably think it a little sentimental, but getting through the past couple of days had been a big deal and he wanted to celebrate once they all got back safe and sound. And, if he felt confident enough, maybe he would invite Jemma to join them. (Just in case, he’d worn one of his best blue button-downs.) 

The comms room, filled with row upon row of active analysts keeping tabs on the in-field agents, was working at a low hum when he arrived and took his place at the control table, having just stored the groceries in the second floor kitchen. Everything was going smoothly, and as he started reading through the on-shift analyst’s reports on how the new weapons were functioning, he began to truly feel proud of the work he and Jemma had done together. 

Within another couple of hours, the mission ended with neither SHIELD nor the civilians suffering a single casualty. Aside from one out of forty-two pistols jamming, Fitz’s weapons had worked flawlessly to bring about the first big operation SHIELD had ever run without a single death.

As the comms room erupted in cheers and congratulations, he looked around to see if Jemma had arrived, wanting to share this moment with the person who deserved it just as much as or more than he did. Unfortunately, she wasn’t to be found in the crowd of agents. Escaping from the adulation of the other analysts – appreciated though it may be – he went hunting for her in her lab. But that, too, was empty. Fitz wanted to keep busy, though, so instead of heading into his own lab to tinker, he decided to start preparing the dinner. His friends would be back at the base in an hour and a half, which should have allowed plenty of time for him to have the food almost done by the time they arrived. 

At least, it would have been enough time if he had any skill in the kitchen whatsoever.

As he stared at the congealing green gunge that was supposed to be caper berry gravy, Fitz wondered if he had, perhaps, been a bit too ambitious in his choices of recipes. Something along the edge of the pan caught fire, and he swore, flailing about with a dishtowel until the flames dissipated. Mumbling to himself about how SHIELD really should consider investing in induction stovetops, he scooped out the singed part of the gravy, and then paused when there was a light knock at the doorway. 

“I came to congratulate SHIELD’s resident nonlethal weapons genius,” Jemma said, a smile playing about her lips as she took in his appearance. On top of the mess that was his apron, Fitz was fairly certain that he had flour in his hair and a dash of spice along the curve of his chin. In other words, he was, predictably, a complete disaster when the object of his affection strode into the room, and he forced himself to smile at her rather than whine internally about how the cosmos had a terrible sense of humor. “But I see that I may have come at a bad time...?”

“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head quickly to attempt to remove the flour from his hair. “Just thought I’d make dinner while the others are heading back, sort of a, ah, celebration for the mission going well.” Jemma let out a little coo, dropping her eyes to where he had a recipe open on his tablet, and he inhaled deeply before he spoke again. “And for me and you.”

Stopping mid-reach towards the recipe, she blinked bemusedly up at him. “What?”

“Couldn’t’ve gotten through it without your help,” he mumbled, his brief flash of confidence disappearing under her gaze. “You’re a life-saver.” 

“Oh,” she said with a quick wave of her hand, that blush of which he was becoming so fond blooming on her cheeks. “All I did was hop on board at the last minute, they were all your designs –”

“That wouldn’t’ve worked without your formula,” he interrupted firmly. “Seriously, Jemma, the mission today’s all down to you. So this celebration’s for you, too. If you want to join us.” 

A breathless smile broke across her face, and she dipped her head as she spoke, as if meeting his eyes was too much at that particular moment. “I’d love to, Fitz. Thank you.”

He shrugged his _you’re welcome_ , successfully suppressing what he actually wanted to say in response, which was something along the lines of ‘ _you’re welcome, and also I love you and would very much like to spend the rest of my life worshipping at your feet and having your babies._ ’ 

“So,” she said at last, breaking the weighted silence as she stepped over to peer at the stove, “what are we having...?” Her nose wrinkled as she caught a glance of the mess in the pan. “It looks... interesting.” 

“That is caper berry gravy,” he said authoritatively, holding her gaze for a good five seconds before bursting into laughter. “Oh God, it’s absolutely _awful_ , I don’t know what I did....” 

Chuckling and putting a top over the pan, Jemma shook her head. “I’m sure the others won’t be expecting orange parfait in sugar cages. They’ll just be happy to be home, and to congratulate you.” She rocked back on her heels, tilting her head to the side as she considered him. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“Oh, _yes_ ,” he answered with feeling, swinging open the door to the fridge and pulling out the (admittedly not top-tier) champagne he’d originally planned on popping when the others had returned. But Jemma was here and smiling so warmly at him, and he decided he was far more interested in impressing her than his friends. (Besides, Hunter would be happier with beer than champagne, anyway.) “Like this?”

“Indeed,” she said, watching him approvingly as he twisted off the foil and managed to pop the cork without either hurting her or the bottle. Once their plastic cups – SHIELD’s mess hall’s finest – were filled an appropriate amount, Jemma held hers up between them. “To brilliant science and successful partnerships.”

“To overachieving biochemists with all the answers,” he teased, earning himself a friendly shove.

Their eyes met as they sipped at their champagne, something heated and a little mischievous flickering behind Jemma’s gaze. Fitz felt his cheeks warm under her appraisal and ducked his head, completely thrown by how unmoored he felt in her presence. For someone so physically tiny, she had an uncanny way of making it seem like she was the only thing worth paying attention to in any given room. 

“I’m glad you came to London,” he confessed as he placed his cup on the table, grasping for something to fill the space between them. “Even if you’ve been busy, and, er, gone for a while, it’s been... y’know. Good to have you.”

“I’m glad I came, too,” she said, scooting a few inches up along the table. “I like working here. Even if I....” With a small shake of her head, she sighed. “Didn’t make the best first impression. Or, well, first _second_ impression.” 

“Oh, well,” he said, waving one hand dismissively in her direction, “no matter. Can’t be worse than me at Sci-Ops, anyway, apparently.” Jemma giggled, dipping her head so that she was mere centimeters from leaning on his shoulder. “Did I _really_ run naked through your backyard?” 

As he took another drink from his cup, she let out a low chortle, swirling the effervescing liquid in hers. “Oh, yes. Although I think drunken stumble might be more accurate,” she teased. “You had a bit of trouble finding the gate again – I watched you out there for quite a while.”

His eyebrows raised almost to his hairline, and, fighting the warmth in his cheeks, he met her gaze. “That’s a bit pervy of you.”

“Yes,” she murmured, staring up at him with a sly smile hovering around her lips, “I like to think so.”

Fitz inhaled sharply, letting his tongue dart out to wet his lips in a brief moment of nervousness that only served to draw her eyes down to his mouth. For half a second, he gave serious thought to just saying to hell with normal social conventions (and the regulations of their employer) and kissing her long and deep like he’d wanted to all day. With the way she’d been looking at him, there was an almost nil chance that she’d protest, and he had the sneaking suspicion that if he were to follow his libido unquestioningly, they would end up shagging right here on this table, dinner and associated ingredients be damned. Appealing an idea though it might be, he _really_ liked Jemma – and, if he were being honest with himself, had since he was a teenager – and he refused to cock it up just because the tension between them now was thick as cream. 

“So,” he said at last, clearing his throat and turning back to his tablet and grocery bags, “what’re we gonna do about this dinner?”

Jemma let out a small exhale before gently placing her empty cup next to his hand. “Do you have eggs?” 

“Yeah!” he exclaimed, voice a little too loud and a tad too relieved.

“I have an idea.” Then she leaned forward, and he thought briefly that she’d just been egging him on about the food and was _actually_ about to kiss him. She got closer and closer, her eyes flicking up to his lips, and then she... reached around him to snag the tablet. Blinking as she spun away and opened the fridge, he narrowed his eyes as he caught the mischievous little grin that twitched up her lips.

Well, two could play that game. 

So, as they cooked, he really couldn’t be blamed for standing right behind her while she cracked the eggs into a mixing bowl, or for letting his fingers trail ever-so-slightly along her neck while he tucked loose hair behind her ear. (He was being _helpful_ , he reasoned with himself, and didn’t at all enjoy the flush that crept steadily into her cheeks.)

By the time the door crashed open, giving way to three boisterous SHIELD agents, Fitz was pressed so tightly against Jemma’s back that they might as well have been moving towards a bedroom. Hands occupied with a spatula and the skillet, she’d been giggling uncontrollably at a joke he’d made about omelets and dissections, and he’d been reveling in the way her shoulders shook as she laughed. At the entrance of the others, however, he pulled reluctantly away, letting his hands drop from her hips and their eyes briefly meeting as she watched him step back.

“Fitz, mate,” Hunter said cheerfully, bounding up to give him an overly enthusiastic slap on the back. “You saved the bloody day! Best mission we’ve had in months –”

“Jemma, too,” Fitz corrected him, feeling his cheeks warm as he met her gaze again before she dropped them back to the omelet to which she was attending.

“Of course, Simmons too,” Trip said, eyes flicking between the two of them and a smile slowly spreading across his face. “Sorry, were we interrupting something...? Got your group text, Fitz, and –”

“Nope,” he interrupted quickly, reaching around to get them all cups and start filling their glasses with the last of the champagne (and beer for Hunter). “No, no, no, nope, dinner’s just about ready.”

Skye made a horrified little squawk, slamming closed the lid of the pot she’d just uncovered. “ _Please_ tell me that’s not alien blood.”

Trying very hard to keep a straight face, he glared at her. “It’s potato and leek soup.”

She stared back at him, and then blew a stray strand of hair out of her face. “It’s blue.”

“Blue leek,” Jemma said calmly, “is a delicacy in Sub-Saharan Africa.” 

Everyone turned to stare at her, and she gave Fitz a pointed glance over her shoulder.

“Uh, yeah. Delicacy. Cost a ruddy fortune.” 

Before he could add to it, Jemma devolved into giggles once more, leaning on the stove-adjacent counter and covering her mouth with one hand. “The string,” she gasped, wiping away a tear of mirth. “The string he used was _blue_.”

“Totally non-toxic, though,” Fitz added, raising his voice so he could be heard over the others’ ensuing laughter. “I checked!” 

“Thank God for that,” Trip deadpanned, leaning over to peek into the pot himself. 

“Hey!” Hunter glared at Skye, who had just snatched his cup out of his hand. “I was gonna drink that!”

“I know,” she retorted drily, “but we’ve gotta do a toast first!” Tapping her finger against the plastic for lack of a utensil, she waited until everyone else had picked up their drinks before returning his. “To Fitz,” she started, raising her cup above her head.

“Who cannot cook,” Hunter threw in, earning him a shove from Skye. 

“But who we love,” Trip added, turning to Fitz with a grin.

“Just as he is,” Skye finished pointedly, smirking first at Jemma and then in his direction.

For two seconds, Fitz wasn’t sure whether he was touched by their words or he wanted to hide behind one of the tables. Without thinking about it, he looked to Jemma, terrified that she’d be embarrassed about him clearly having told his friends what she’d told him _presumably_ in confidence. When their eyes met again, however, she just gave him a soft smile and lifted her cup to her lips. All of his concern melted away in a nanosecond, something warm and indefinable spreading through his chest. Even though they hadn’t actually declared anything to each other, he was certain that they were both on the same page, and he wondered suddenly how long it would be until they could be alone again. 

“Oh, I....” A familiar voice trailed off on an uncomfortable laugh, and the whole room turned to stare at where Raina stood in the doorway. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be alone....”

“ _Raina_ ,” Fitz said, knowing he was stating the obvious but too surprised to come up with a better opening salvo. “What’re you doing here?”

“I, um....” Considering the fact that the woman had never appeared nervous about anything in her life, she seemed surprisingly uncomfortable now. “I was looking for you, to say congratulations on....” She trailed off at the sight of Jemma, eyebrows raising up to the edge of her corkscrew curls. “What is _she_ doing here?”

“She was invited,” Fitz gritted out, striding forward to grab Raina’s shoulder and angle her away from the group. “What d’you want?”

If he was being honest with himself, most of his annoyance at the moment was not actually because his cheating ex-girlfriend had just interrupted a nice moment with his friends and his hopeful new-girlfriend, but because Raina’s presence reminded him of Jemma’s unsavory past. He’d very happily forgotten that, once upon a time, she’d seduced Raina’s boyfriend in a particularly crude way, and he would be much happier now if he could forget it forever. It just seemed so unlike Jemma, so separate from the girl he’d grown up admiring from a distance at the Academy, and so completely different from the woman he’d been working and flirting with for the past three days. Remembering that they were the same person put him instantly into a rather foul mood.

“I was just going to congratulate you,” she said quietly, giving him a half-smile. “See if you wanted to get a drink, or....”

“Are you kidding me? I don’t want anything to do with you.” He let out an incredulous scoff, folding his arms over his chest. “I can’t believe you’d think –” 

“I care about you,” Raina insisted. “You could do so much _better_ than SHIELD –”

“I like it here,” he snapped. “I like doing something good in the world –” 

“When you’re not tied up in bureaucratic red tape!” She exhaled and squared her shoulders. “I’m leaving SHIELD. I can’t find out what I could become while I’m trapped here. And I want you to come with me.” 

“Why in the _bloody hell_ would I ever do that?”

“Because we were good together.”

“You were not,” scoffed Hunter, standing a few feet away and, like everyone else in the room, not even bothering to pretend that he wasn’t listening in. When Fitz shot him a glare, Hunter just shrugged. “What? You weren’t. It was like watching a bumblebee try to fuck a lamppost.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Skye muttered from his other side, and Trip elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

“Come _with_ me, Fitz,” Raina said, ignoring the others and pulling one of his hands between her two.

“Excuse me,” came a soft voice from behind the others, and Fitz turned just in time to see Jemma ducking her head as she slipped around him to escape through the door. “I can’t do this –” 

“Of course you can’t,” Raina said with a light sneer. “You’re practically made for SHIELD, the men in black suits with more rules than they know what to do with –” 

“Hey, now,” Fitz interrupted. “Leave her –” 

“She’d just hold you back.” Raina stared up at him defiantly, and in his peripheral vision he saw Jemma freeze in her tracks. “I mean, hell, you’d be better off with Miss Daisy over here –” 

“Hey,” Skye cut in, affronted, “don’t say that name like it’s a bad thing –” 

“B is for blue is for _whatever_. What use is biochemistry to an agency anyway?” Tilting her head, Raina met Jemma’s gaze as the other woman turned back around. “It’s just a lot of arrogant showoffs who don’t know how to use a computer.” 

“Okay, fine,” Jemma snapped, stomping back to them, eyes flashing with anger in a way that Fitz almost definitely shouldn’t find so attractive. “You want to do this, Raina?” 

“Do what, _Jemma_?” 

“I’d rather be arrogant,” Jemma gritted out, color rising high on her cheeks, “than sleep around to get what I wanted.” 

Raina reared as if she’d been slapped, and she glanced over at Fitz. “You’re one to talk,” she shot back, eliciting a look of indignation and confusion on Jemma’s face.

“What....” Jemma started, attention briefly drawn away as someone crossed through the hallway perpendicular to this one. As her gaze was elsewhere, Raina darted to the side of the doorway and grabbed one of the epee swords from the display that adorned it and used the blade to poke at Jemma’s jeans. Startled, she jumped to the side and then glared at the other woman. “Seriously?” 

“Why waste words?” Raina drawled, tapping the sword sharply against the ankle of Jemma’s other leg.

Rolling her eyes, Jemma threw one arm out to the side. “I don’t have anything else to say to you –!” 

“Ah,” Raina said with a grin, lowering the epee, “so I’ve won, and you've lost.” 

A thunderous cloud darkened Jemma’s face, then, and she squared her shoulders. “Fine,” she bit out, taking two quick steps forward, grabbing a different sword from the display, and then hopping a few feet back. “Have at it.” 

With a gleeful smile, Raina raised her epee between them. “En garde, Miss Simmons.”

“That’s Doctor Simmons, to you,” she quipped primly, sinking into what appeared to be a genuine fencing pose, one hand behind her back and her body turned to the side to present less of a target. “Twice over, for that matter.”

“Arrogant,” Raina snapped, darting forward to tap Jemma’s sword with her own.

Blocking her strike and then parrying forward with her own, Jemma rolled her eyes. “Show-off,” she retorted.

Fitz found himself unable to do anything other than stare, open-mouthed, at where the two women had begun to fence in the hallway of their place of employment.

“Bloody hell, mate,” Hunter muttered, leaning on the doorway above Skye, who was watching events unfold with undisguised enthusiasm. “Are they fighting _for_ you?”

“Honestly,” Fitz croaked, “I have no idea _what_ just happened.”

“Should we stop them?” Trip leaned around Fitz, watching Jemma smoothly duck to avoid a particularly wild swipe of Raina’s epee.

“We should make popcorn,” Skye said authoritatively, and Trip flicked her arm. “Ow!”

The two women disappeared around one of the columns, reappearing quickly around the other side of the open space above the courtyard, and Hunter waved one hand towards the rest of the disaster quartet. 

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, they’re getting away!” At his beckoning, the group followed behind him, scrambling through the halls to get around to the other side of the dueling pair. 

“Seriously,” Fitz puffed, catching himself around the edge of one corner as Jemma and Raina appeared from behind the opposite one, “where the _hell_ did Jemma learn to fence?”

“You’re not wondering that for both of them?” Skye, leaning against the column behind him, had taken her phone out and began to use his shoulder as a tripod. “And lemme be clear, I’m wondering but not complaining – I’m not gonna need new fantasy material for _weeks_.”

“Raina’s always been a bit of a question mark,” he muttered, shaking her phone off his shoulder.

“I did hear Bob mention something about her training Jemma in something,” Hunter mused, munching on a bag of crisps that he’d apparently conjured out of thin air.

“But _fencing_?? How is that at all useful to a SHIELD agent?” Fitz shook his head at the mere thought; nothing that had happened in the past fifteen minutes made any sense at all.

“Teaches coordination and how to be calm in close combat,” Trip answered, eyes fixed worriedly on where Raina had just rushed Jemma, with both of them now holding tight to each other’s forearms. Underneath the scuffles of their shoes, Fitz could just barely hear that Raina was saying something into Jemma’s ear, but he couldn’t make out the words. “Y’know what, I’m gonna –”

Before Trip could stride over and end the kerfuffle, Raina twisted Jemma’s free arm down, causing the other woman to grunt in pain and then swing up with the handle of her sword, which made a nasty crack as it collided with Raina’s temple. She crashed to the floor, sword skidding across the faux-marble linoleum, and Fitz found himself rushing forward, instinctively sliding to the ground by her side.

“Jesus Christ, Simmons,” Fitz hissed, touching his fingers gently to the already blooming bruise on Raina’s head. Moving to care for the injured woman without giving any thought to how it might look, he gently leveled her head from the floor onto his lap.

“Me?!” The incredulity to Jemma’s voice caught his attention, and he looked up, surprised to see the confusion and hurt on her face as she stared down at him. Before she could say anything else, she glanced down at the sword in her land and let out a disgusted “ugh” as she tossed it onto the floor. “It seems I’ve been laboring under a misapprehension,” she bit out. “A very – very foolish mistake. Forgive me. I won’t... it won’t happen again.” With one last look at where Fitz leaned over Raina, Jemma shook her head and strode down the hallway, around the corner, and out of sight.

Feeling distinctly discomfited by her response, he turned back to where Raina had just reached for his hand.

“See what this place does to people?” she whispered, giving him a sad half-smile. “Come with me.”

He blinked down at her, lips curling incredulously. “Are you kidding me? Do you really think I could ever trust you again?”

“But –”

“No,” he interrupted, glancing up as SHIELD medical agents came rushing down the corridor. “Not ever, Raina. Just... leave me alone, alright?”

As Fitz scooted back, Raina pushed herself up onto her elbows, waving away the medical agent who kneeled by her head. Although she tried calling him back, he ignored her, continuing down the hallway, past his friends, and back to the kitchen. Maybe if he waited there long enough, Jemma would come back. 

She didn’t.

 

_20 Dec. 2014_  
_After spending all evening flirting with Jemma, have somehow managed to chase her away again._  
_Might not be a bad thing. Probably shouldn’t get involved with someone who seduces away other peoples’ boyfriends. Even if I do like her more than any other person I’ve ever met.  
_ _Back to square one. Time to find the Scotch._


	6. Someone Like You

For the rest of the week – that is, the following two business days until the holiday – Fitz tried not to think about Jemma. He tried not to think about her while he was filling out paperwork for the brilliant ICERs she’d helped him design; he tried not to think about her while he was cleaning up the work they’d done in his lab; he tried not to think about her while he was making tea, or eating, or breathing. His attempts, in general, were a complete failure. 

In part, he took his cues from her actions, or a lack thereof. Where she had initiated almost all of their previous conversations, he didn’t see her once at SHIELD for the rest of that week, even when he took to walking out of his way to pass by the biochemical labs. Each time he refreshed his email, his inbox remained devoid of any word from her. (The little ‘no-new-messages’ blip began to annoy him so much that he disabled the computer’s speakers.)

Over the two days of Christmas that he spent with his mum – traveling up to Glasgow for the occasion – he had to tell extended family members that, yes, he was still single, approximately sixteen times. Fortunately, his uncle’s famously paint-strippingly-strong eggnog made the gatherings relatively painless.

“You need to get laid.” Hunter announced this as he brought the table their first round of drinks from the open bar.

“Tried that,” Fitz quipped, reaching for his pint. “Doesn’t fix things.” 

“Unless it’s with the right person,” Trip said pointedly as he leaned forward for his own drink.

“I swear to God,” Hunter groused, squinting as Skye stretched up to give Trip a kiss on the cheek, “it’s like you’re an actual bloody Disney prince.” 

True to form, the four of them had commandeered a table at the back of Coulson’s Boxing Day party. A few months back, the Director had made the executive decision that New Year’s Day office parties were not especially popular, and had moved the holiday shindig accordingly. Boxing Day wasn’t much better, but Fitz would admit that – as he wasn’t painfully hung-over at the moment – it was definitely an improvement. He hadn’t wanted to come at all, but Hunter had shown up at his flat and strong-armed him through the door.

“C’mon, don’t be so grumps,” Skye said, giving Fitz an affectionate nudge. “I don’t get why you and Simmons aren’t screwing like rabbits now anyway, after the way she was devouring you with her eyes the other night.”

“And then Raina happened.” Fitz sighed and shook his head. “It’s just... better we don’t, okay? Drop it.” Letting out a brief, disbelieving snort, he took a long drink. “I still can’t believe they were actually _fencing_.”

Skye gave him a sharp poke and stretched out in her folding chair. “You and me both. Not that I’m complaining, personally.”

“Actually,” Hunter mused, downing the first pint he’d brought for himself and then reaching for the second, “fencing’s kinda soothing.” The others all turned to stare at him.

“It’s gotta be a British thing,” Skye muttered over the rim of her cocktail. 

“ _English_ ,” Fitz emphasized. “Won’t catch me with a sword.”

Trip shrugged and crossed his arms loosely over his chest. “I took a fencing elective for a while. It’s not bad.” 

“Thank you,” Hunter said, gesturing emphatically in Trip’s direction and just barely managing not to spill his pint.

Skye looked back and forth between the two of them, mouth hanging open slightly in bemusement. “What is happening right now?” 

“Guess it’s gonna be you and me against the fencers,” Fitz answered, tapping the edge of his pint against her glass.

With a small flourish, Skye lifted her cocktail into the air. “To never exercising.”

“And to drinking way too much,” Fitz finished, both of them grinning as they entwined arms before taking large gulps of their respective drinks.

“Hey, I do that too!” Hunter raised his glass a few seconds too late to be included in the toast, and Trip let out a cross between a snort and a laugh. 

“Just don’t fence right after.”

Sniffing in faux indignation, Hunter tipped his nose into the air. “I could go a few bouts.” 

“Don’t worry, guys,” Skye deadpanned, “I stole his lanyard an hour ago, he can’t get to the upper levels without us.”

Hunter made a sharp, indignant noise. “What the –”

“Last time we went out,” Fitz said pointedly, “you got so pissed you tried to break into a second floor window to see what Bobbi had on her computer.” 

“Which she doesn’t have,” Trip continued, “because she’s been on TDY in Hong Kong for the past two months.” 

“We do it because we care,” Skye said blithely, and then patted Hunter on the shoulder.

He scowled at them, hunching down in his chair. “This is bloody unfair.” 

“Can I make it better?” The four friends all turned in unison to see Bobbi standing behind them, holding a small goblet of eggnog.

“Bob!” Hunter exclaimed with unbridled enthusiasm, jumping out of his chair to give her an affectionate kiss. “Thought you weren’t comin’ back ‘til tomorrow...?”

“Finished the mission early,” she explained as she pulled over a chair and allowed Hunter to swing one arm around her shoulders. “And I couldn’t miss Coulson’s holiday party – when else am I gonna see all of you guys wearing ties?”

Unlike the previous year, Coulson’s chosen holiday gift to the male agents had been brightly patterned Christmas ties (or one with an appropriately ugly pattern honoring the agent’s preferred observed holiday). Accordingly, Fitz, Trip, and Hunter were now all festooned with ties of varying garishness. At the outset of the party, Hunter had worn it around his forehead like a bandana. Fitz considered himself lucky, as his was just a collection of bright little Christmas trees patterned over dark blue; it even matched the button-down shirt he’d thrown on before leaving his flat.

“You wouldn’t’ve missed much,” Fitz assured her, eyes wandering as he glimpsed someone he thought was Jemma across the crowded lobby. 

“Just Fitz feeling sorry for himself again.” Skye tried poking him, but he dodged her finger.

Bobbi followed Fitz’s gaze. “Jemma?” The woman Fitz had spotted laughed, shoulders shimmying in just the way Jemma’s did, and he almost missed Bobbi’s sigh. “Y’know, she’s had a rough couple years. She never really fit in with the New York office, and then Raina slept with her fiancé –”

“Wait, what?” Fitz whipped his head around to stare at Bobbi open-mouthed.

As she took a sip of her own pint, she arched an eyebrow. “I mean, they’d only been engaged for a week, but she walked in on them in his office. Tough image to get out of your head –”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?!” Fitz’s voice was embarrassingly high-pitched again, but he was too distracted to care. The pieces slotted neatly into place for the first time since the whole debacle with Raina began – of _course_ she’d been lying about Jemma, and of _course_ Jemma would never do something so despicable.

Hunter, who was sitting in between the two of them, scooted his chair back at the ferocity of Bobbi’s glare. “I _did_ try to tell you, but you threw a tantrum about how we should lay off your girlfriend.”

Wincing, Fitz ducked his head. Ironically, that had been the day immediately before he’d learned that Raina had been cheating on him. “Christ. So Jemma....”

“Came here to start over, but with SHIELD having her out on TDY so much, and with Raina having transferred here first, she hasn’t had a great time of it.”

Fitz let Bobbi’s words sink in, all of Jemma’s behavior finally making sense. So he’d been more right about her when he’d been sixteen than he could possibly have predicted – and now there was absolutely no reason for them to not be together in the way that he desperately wanted. The way that, based on her flirting last week, they both wanted. If he hadn’t somehow managed to fuck it up irreparably, that is.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, shoving his chair away from the table and making a beeline across the packed party floor to find Jemma. When he finally spotted her again, looking particularly fetching in a dark green jumper with subtly festive little stars dotted across the wool, he inhaled and strode directly over to her. “Jemma?”

A wide smile was on her face as she turned away from her conversation, but it slackened immediately into surprise as she realized who’d called for her. “Fitz!” 

“Can I...” he said, pausing to swallow and nod over at Agent Anne Weaver, with whom Jemma had been chatting. “Can I talk to you? Over here?”

With a small smile back at the other agent, Jemma followed him out into the hallway beyond the lobby, the party’s noise lowering to a dull roar. The large potted fern by the archway was festooned with a red satin ribbon so large that the branch from which it hung had sunk to the floor. (The suit of armor, in contrast, had been given its own Christmas tie – candy-cane patterned.) He noticed the way she crossed her arms at her stomach, almost hugging herself in discomfort, and he had to take another deep breath before he could force himself to say what he knew he had to say – even if he messed it all up, he had to at least try.

“I owe you an apology,” Fitz started, twisting one thumb into the palm of his other hand. “About Raina. She told me that you ran off with her boyfriend and, uh, left her brokenhearted.” 

Jemma’s eyebrows raised almost to her hairline, and she ducked her head, letting out a disbelieving little scoff. “Ah, yes, well – no. It was the other way around. It was my fiancé. My... heart. So.” 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, trying to meet her eyes. “I really – I mean, that’s why you were always so weird around her. Rightly so.” 

“Yeah.” She shrugged, keeping her eyes trained somewhere near the front doors. “Can’t seem to get away from her.” 

“Well, I’m just – really sorry. Again. And I just... wanted to tell you....” Fitz heaved a deep breath; he didn’t like having to fly by the seat of his pants like this, didn’t like not having months to prepare and think up what to say, and edit and mull and prevaricate. But he had the impending sense that if he didn’t come clean right this second, the ocean between them would become impassable. “You told me once that you liked me just as I am.” Her eyes flew up to his at that, surprise written across her features, and he had to take another breath at the intensity of her gaze. “And I just wanted to say, um, likewise. I mean, you _are_ a bit haughty, and you almost always say the wrong thing in every situation. And you’re way too interested in dissecting things for any normal human being. But you’re...” he trailed off, faltering for any descriptor of how breathtakingly amazing he found her without sounding too much like a love-struck teenager. “...A nice girl. And I think we could be great together.” Fitz winced, unable to meet her eyes any longer. “So if you wanted to go to dinner sometime... you and me... that might be nice.” When he chanced a glance up, her mouth had parted in shock. “More than nice.” 

“Oh,” she breathed, eyes shimmering in the hallway’s fluorescent lights. “Right. Bloody hell.” 

Worried by her expression, Fitz didn’t dare say anything else, his eyes only being drawn away by movement in the archway behind her.

“Doctor Simmons,” Coulson said, and she whipped around to face him. “We’re ready for you.” 

Swallowing thickly, she glanced back at Fitz and tucked nonexistent loose hair behind her ear. “Yes, sir.” After a few, long moments, she sighed and hurried after their boss.

Fitz swore under his breath and pounded one fist against the wall. With a small shriek of pain, he shook out that hand and shuffled back into the party room to slump against the wall. To his annoyance, the crowd was so thick that he couldn’t even get through it to return to his drink without disturbing the toast, and the last thing he wanted right now was to draw attention to himself. 

“...An eventful year,” Coulson was saying, flanked on stage by his second-in-command, Melinda May, and – to Fitz’s confusion – Jemma. “But no other department has seen changes and improvements like those of the science division. I wanted to be the first to tell you all about the new office SHIELD is opening in Monterey Bay, dedicated to coordinating our research and development activities around the world. And I’ve never been more pleased to announce that, effective immediately, our very own Doctor Jemma Simmons will be heading up that initiative.” Applause erupted in the crowd, and Fitz felt his stomach drop. “I’ve been proud to have her in the London offices for even part of this year, and even though we hate to lose her to California –” 

“No!” Fitz didn’t even really realize that the shout had come from him, but sure enough every head in the room turned en masse to stare in his direction. “I mean....” The room’s silence was deafening. “It’s just that... it’s such a shame for, um, for the UK... office... of SHIELD... to lose such a brilliant scientific mind.” Trying to block out the hundreds of other faces fixed assuredly on his own, Fitz turned his gaze to Jemma, ignoring the way Coulson had just leaned over to whisper something to May. “For – for the agents of our office, like, ah, me and you, to lose one of our top people. Ah, our... top person, really.” He winced, brain spinning out the more awkward ways that could be interpreted. Everyone in the room continued to watch him, their expressions becoming more and more nonplussed the longer he stood there. “Well, I’ve, ah, gotta dash. Things to do. Speeches to, ah... make.” 

As he tripped over absolutely nothing on the floor behind him, Fitz thought he caught a glimpse of Jemma moving toward him in his peripheral vision. But before she could pursue him, however, he managed to pick himself up and sprint out the door.

The walk to his flat without his coat was utterly frigid, but the cold kept him from being comfortable enough to fall into a well of self-pity before he was by himself again. If he were going to dwell on how much he hated himself, he’d rather do it in private.

 

 _26 Dec. 2014  
_ _Five days to New Year & I’m alone again. Predictably. Woman of my dreams is off to America, & I’m out of Scotch. Happy hols to me._

 

\------

 

Almost two hours later, knocks erupted on the door of Fitz’s flat. “Alright, alright,” he shouted, pushing himself up from where he’d been lying on his couch and debating whether or not he should go fetch more Scotch from the store.

In the hallway of his building stood his three of his five favorite people in the world (the fourth being his mum, and the other being the woman about whom he’d been sulking), wide grins on their faces and wooly winter caps atop their heads.

“Pack your suitcase,” Hunter bellowed, clapping him on the back and galumphing past him. “We’re going to fucking Paris!”

“Thought it might be good for you to get away for a while,” Trip explained, giving Fitz a kind smile and handing over the winter coat that he’d forgotten at the party.

“We’re all still on vacay for the next few days anyway, and we thought what the hell! Plus, Trip got Hunter’s car working again.” Skye slipped past Trip and shook a light layer of snow off her purple knitted cap. 

Closing the door behind them, Fitz turned back into his flat with a frown. “Hunter has a car?”

“I borrowed it from my landlord,” he called out from the bedroom, and Trip groaned.

“I don’t wanna know.” Shaking his head, Trip followed Skye into the living room. 

“Do you have _any_ underwear without monkeys on ‘em?” Hunter stuck his head out of the bedroom. “That’s a bit weird.”

“Yes,” Fitz gritted out, reaching forward to grab Hunter and shove him into the living room with the other two. “Seriously, when did you all decide to go to _Paris_?” 

“When you had a small mental breakdown in front of the entire London office,” Skye quipped, dodging Trip’s unsubtle attempt to flick her arm in reprimand.

“‘Sides,” Hunter said, bending over to squint at something on one of Fitz’s bookcases, “French birds are easy, and what better way to –” 

“Oi –” Fitz exclaimed, but he was interrupted by Trip.

“Hey, man, that’s not cool.”

Hunter straightened up to see all three of them glaring at him, and he widened his hands in feigned innocence. “Oh, c’mon, s’not like any of you are French.”

“Seriously,” Trip said, crossing his arms, “that’s rude as hell.”

“Ugh, fine –” Hunter said, and, with a dramatic eye-roll, stepped up to one of Fitz’s large living room windows. Not bothering to open it, he bellowed at the glass: “To any of the French population who can hear me right now, I’m sorry!” Glowering, he turned back around. “Better?”

“It’s a start.” Skye tossed his hat at him, and he grabbed it out of the air.

“I swear,” Hunter muttered, “it’s like you’re all determined to turn me into a decent person. Fuckin’ disgusting.” 

“We just thought it’d be a good idea to take your mind off things,” Trip said to Fitz, having turned his attention away from Hunter. 

“Off of Simmons,” Fitz clarified, his suspicions confirmed by the unsubtle looks the three of them gave each other. “Don’t think going to Paris’ll help that, to be honest.”

“You’ve been hung up on her for months,” Skye said, expression a mix of empathetic and kind, “maybe it’s time you let her go.”

“Years,” Fitz corrected. 

“I mean,” Hunter added, “there’s been all these bloody hints, but has she ever stuck her fucking tongue down your fucking throat?”

“No,” Fitz answered, “she has not.” His mind wandered for a few seconds, wondering briefly what might have happened if Coulson hadn’t interrupted them in that hallway, and then found himself being smacked _really_ painfully upside the back of the head. “What the hell?!” 

“Stop thinking about her sticking her tongue down your throat,” Skye scolded. “That’s the _opposite_ of what ‘getting over her’ looks like.”

With a dramatic sigh and eye-roll, Fitz threw up his hands and turned back to his bedroom. “Alright, fine! No thinking about Simmons, packing, on it.” 

It only took him a few minutes to throw some clothes, his toothbrush, and his phone charger into a duffel bag, and, without further ado, he followed his friends out of his flat and down to the street. In a fit of pique at the way the damned thing hadn’t done a whit to improve his life, Fitz decided to leave the diary in his flat. No room for it in his duffel, anyway.

As the front door to his building clicked shut behind him, he squinted up at where thick snowflakes had just begun to fall. Shrugging the duffel higher up on his shoulder, he reached into his coat pocket for his gloves. To his dismay, he could only find one glove, and he bit out a swear, lifting his head to call out to the others that he’d be right back. But then he almost swallowed his tongue at the sight of Jemma Simmons emerging through the snowflakes like some sort of doctorate-bearing angel.

“Jemma!” he blurted out, warm breath curling into the freezing air between them. Behind her, his friends started cheering and laying on the horn as loud as possible, evidently trying their damnedest to distract him from studying the soft smile on Jemma’s face. 

“Come the fuck on, Fitz,” yelled Hunter from the driver’s seat. 

“Yeah, it’s cold as balls out here!” added Skye, who let out a loud squawk when Trip elbowed her in the side to shut her up.

“Hi, Fitz.” Jemma’s hair wafted gently around her face, and Fitz wondered dimly how she always managed to look put-together when he could barely take two steps without falling over himself.

“What are you doing here?” His voice got stuck in his throat, but he managed to shuffle closer, eyeing the way her hands were curled nervously at her sides. 

“I just wanted to know if you were available for bar mitzvahs and christenings,” she teased, lips twitching up in amusement, “as well as promotions. Excellent speech.”

A deep flush spread up his neck, and he successfully sublimated that familiar urge to run and hide. This was precisely why he should never, _ever_ speak his thoughts out loud – let alone in front of the entirety of SHIELD’s London office. “I thought you were going to America.” 

“Well,” she said quietly, taking another few steps forward and gazing up at him through her eyelashes, “I was, but, um... I realized I’d forgotten to do something. Before I left.” 

“What?”

“I forgot to, um – kiss you goodbye.” Fitz’s breath caught, and her lips quirked upwards. “Do you mind?”

“Not really, no,” he breathed, staring as she leaned up. Snowflakes were stuck to her skin, sparkling in the streetlight, he could feel her coat as it brushed against his, and just when their lips were about to meet... his friends started cheering and laying on the tiny VW Beetle’s aged horn again.

Holding back a smile, Jemma turned her head towards the ruckus. “Your friends?”

“Nope,” he answered without pause. “Never seen them before in my life.”

“Look,” Hunter called out, “are you coming to fucking Paris or not?”

“Not.” Fitz glanced down at Jemma, who he realized had been staring at his lips.

“Great, ‘cause there’s no goddamn room anyway,” Skye yelled back, grinning as she dropped into the backseat. “Let’s get this show on the road, Lancelot.”

“I swear,” Hunter grumbled, aggressively shifting the car into gear. “If you call me that one more time, I’m chucking you out at the Chunnel.”

Fitz tuned the rest of their bickering out, dropping his gaze back to Jemma’s. “D’you wanna, um, come inside?” 

“Yes, please,” she said, giving her shoulders a small shake as she followed him back to the building. “I was _not_ expecting it to snow tonight.”

“Looks nice, at least,” he said, holding open the front and then lift doors for her.

Jemma hummed, peering up at him over the collar of her coat as she slipped past him. “I don’t suppose we’ll be spending much time looking out the windows, though.”

Watching her tongue dart out to moisten her lips, Fitz nearly forgot how to breathe. “Yeah, no. I mean, who cares about snow. It’s overrated. And wet.” 

A cross between a snort and a laugh escaped her throat as the lift shuddered to a stop, and she gave him a slow smile. “Indeed. Quite wet.”

Once he’d managed to unlock the flat – only dropping the keys once – Fitz hovered in the entryway by his dropped duffel, watching Jemma close the door behind her. Making pointed eye contact, she crowded into his space, tempting, pink lips parting as she stretched up....

“I’ll be,” Fitz squeaked, and then cleared his throat, “right back. Must – ah, do something. Very quick.” He slid out from between Jemma and the wall, noting her fondly exasperated expression and backing quickly towards his bedroom. “Just, y’know, amuse yourself. Got the newest scientific journals, and magazines, and... just, wait right there.” Before he could make more of an ass of himself, he spun around and dashed into his room, swinging the door closed before hunting frantically for a clean undershirt and pants. He still had questions – like what she was doing about her promotion – but if she was here and looking at him like _that_... well, the answers could wait.

There wasn’t anything wrong with his trousers and shirt, he thought to himself as he rapidly stripped both off, but judging by the way Jemma was devouring him with her eyes this was _definitely_ the right time to wear his nicest underclothes. Or at least ones that didn’t have holes in them. As he pulled on a fresh undershirt and went hunting for pants that weren’t his monkey-patterned boxers, he heard the distinct sound of the front door closing. Panic darted through his chest.

“Jemma?” Fitz cracked the door open and peered around the jamb, but received no response. Against his better judgment, he slipped into the hallway, still only wearing his boxers, undershirt, and shorts, increasingly worried about the silence that permeated the apartment. “Jemma? You there?” 

The miniscule living room and bathroom were all empty, completely befuddling him until he caught a glimpse through his window of a familiar figure striding down the street, brown hair streaming behind her in the wind and snow. His mouth dropped open, hurt worming through his chest, and he wondered what he could have possibly done wrong when he wasn’t even in the room to do it.

Then he caught a glimpse of the open, bright red diary lying on top of the stack of magazines that he’d just pointed out to Jemma.

“Oh, _bollocks_.” Fitz dropped his hands on either side of the lined pages filled with scribbles, and with horror read the circled note that must have sent the love of his life running.

 

_“DR. JEMMA SIMMONS – know-it-all, braggart, and rude as HELL to boot. I. CANNOT. STAND. HER.”_

“ _Fuuuuuck_ ,” he groaned, pressing his palms hard against his eyelids. Of course, she couldn’t have happened upon the entry where he’d spent ages doodling ideas for how to impress someone he’d definitely called “ _the smartest person SHIELD’s ever had the lucky accident to hire._ ”

A bolt of adrenaline shot through him, and he whirled around, desperate to explain himself, to beg her to reconsider. Fitz was out the door and halfway down his building’s hall before he realized that it was, to use Skye’s turn of phrase, cold as balls outside and he didn’t even have shoes on. After running back inside, dragging on the first pair of trainers he could find, and grabbing a navy sweatshirt, he sped back out the door with his keys. Not even bothering with the lift, he took the stairs two at a time and skidded out into the wintry night. Thank God for the horrific weather, because he was able to follow Jemma’s footsteps through the snow on the mostly deserted street. 

In the distance, he could hear [a familiar song from the ‘60’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGBXIK5TZjs) his mum used to play on repeat when he was a kid, as if someone had their boom box pointed out at the street. As he sprinted past the few people brave enough to weather the storm, he realized that he was running through the first London snowstorm of the season in trainers, a sweatshirt and undershirt, and green, monkey-patterned boxers. He wasn’t sure if he looked homeless or crazy. Or both. 

At long last, the trail of Jemma’s steps faded out amongst the growing crowd, and he stared desperately around, wiping snowflakes out of his eyes. There was no sight of her anywhere. As usual, Fitz had managed to take the one possibly perfect thing in his life and royally fuck it up without even trying. Swearing, he kicked at the snow, nearly sending his poorly tied trainer flying into the street.

“Fitz?!”

He spun around to see Jemma standing in the stoop of the Tesco’s a few feet away, a paper bag in her hand and disbelief etched on her face.

“Jemma,” Fitz blurted, lunging forward with his hands outstretched, “it’s not what it looked like! I mean, it _is_ what it looked like, but I didn’t mean it. Well, I did _mean_ it, but I didn’t mean it... like I meant it....” He cringed, scratching at one eyebrow and praying that the past ten minutes would just magically rewind so that he could do everything over again. When that didn’t happen, he exhaled. “For God’s sake,” he finished weakly, “it’s only a diary.”

Blinking past the utterly dumbfounded expression she now wore, Jemma let her lips twitch up in amusement. “I know. I thought it might be time for a fresh start.” With a small flourish, she reached into the paper bag and pulled out a deep blue diary with silver edging. “Just in time for the New Year.”

A wide smile spread across his face, and he nearly collapsed in relief. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and snugged her in against his chest.

“Thank you,” he breathed, burying his face in her hair. In that moment, knowing that she’d officially seen him at his absolute most foolish and yet was still _here_ – and was hugging him back – Fitz loved Jemma more than ever.

“You can pay me back the ten quid,” she teased, pulling away to meet his gaze. “If you feel that badly about it.” She paused, eyes sliding down his body and then up again. “I think I might like this look more than the – what was it? The fluffy....”

“Peter Rabbit,” he muttered, wondering if she’d ever get tired of bringing up the most embarrassing moments of his life like a ticker tape.

Humming, she pressed herself against him, fingers curling around his sweatshirt’s collar. “Good looks, all,” she breathed, and then – at long last – captured his lips with hers. Fitz inhaled through his nose, reaching around to cup the back of her head with one hand and encircle her waist with the other arm. Her mouth worked heatedly against his, tongue darting tantalizingly against his lips once, twice, three times before she angled his mouth open and slid her tongue inside. A soft noise echoed out of his throat unbidden, and she seemed to take encouragement from that, setting her teeth gently into his bottom lip and then soothing the bite with her tongue and lips. Ghosting their mouths together again and again, lighter, headier, and Fitz’s head was swimming by the time she dropped back to her heels.

“Wait a minute,” he breathed, transfixed by the darker flush of her mouth, and then gave in to the impulse to brush one thumb along the sensual curve of her bottom lip. “Nice girls don’t kiss like that.” 

A smirk flashed across her face, and Jemma stretched forward to rub her nose lightly against Fitz’s. “Oh, yes they fucking do.”

Then she slanted his mouth open with hers yet again and he forgot to breathe altogether, pulling her tightly against himself and flatly ignoring the icy cold that sought his attention. Noticing his shivering, Jemma managed to secure the edges of her own coat around his back without separating their lips, and he let out a low, pleased hum into her kiss. Sliding one hand inside his baggy sweatshirt, she reached around and all of a sudden her fingers were digging into his bum, causing his hips to jerk forward. He could feel her grin against his lips, and he was rather glad that it was so cold out, because otherwise there would now be very obvious evidence between them of quite how much he liked her feeling him up. Not that he thought she would’ve minded, since she was decidedly groping his ass in public while still managing to kiss him breathless.

“Your flat,” she eventually murmured against his ear, flicking her tongue out to tease at his earlobe.

“Yup,” he agreed, dazed enough that she needed to tug him forward after her. “My flat. Good place. For things.” As he tangled their fingers securely together, another shiver rolled through him. “Like clothes.”

Wrinkling her nose in a deeply fetching way, she glanced at him over her shoulder. “Or no clothes.” 

Fitz was this close to letting “ _I bloody love you_ ” fall from his lips right then and there, but he managed to keep himself to a thick swallow and suave eyebrow raise. In any case, he suspected that Jemma knew exactly what he’d wanted to say, judging by the way she nibbled at her lower lip, eyes dancing in the streetlights.

 

 _26 Dec. 2014  
_ _[[NO ADDITIONAL ENTRY RECORDED]]_

 

\------

 

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Fitz ambled out of his bathroom, long since nude and more recently since utterly sated. On his way back to his bedroom, where Jemma awaited him (also very naked and more gorgeous than his every expectation), he spotted the cursed red-covered diary and paused. He’d started recording his thoughts on a whim, because Skye had gotten the thing from a fan and he’d needed an outlet. But after a year of using it to scratch out his hopes, rages, and snide asides, he realized he didn’t need it anymore. With Jemma, he didn’t have to hide any part of himself away in a diary; she knew all the worst and best parts of him, and wanted him just the way he was. 

With a joyful sense of finality, Fitz tossed the diary into the bottom of a drawer half-filled with rejected blueprints and design sketches, and then shoved it unceremoniously shut. Not wanting to seem like he didn’t appreciate her gesture, though, he carefully put the new diary in the old one’s place. Even if he never used it, she’d see it tomorrow morning and hopefully smile.

“Come on then, Fitz,” she called from behind him, and he turned to see her leaning against the doorframe. Wrapped in his sheets, hair a sex-ruffled mess, and lips curved up in a secretive smile, she was definitely the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “I’m nowhere near done with you yet.” 

A grin split his face, and he hurried down the hall, catching Jemma around the waist to spin her around and delighting in the peal of laughter that she let out in response.

Oh, yes – this year, Fitz was going to be spending much, _much_ less time writing in that blasted diary.

 

**_The End_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or, not quite the end, as there's a short epilogue left!


	7. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the uneven posting schedule and the delay for this last snippet, but I hope you all enjoyed this little crack-fluff-fest!

When Fitz faded into consciousness on New Year’s Day of his twenty-seventh year, the first thing he noticed was someone’s hand sliding up his bare chest. Blinking his eyes open, he was greeted with the sight of Jemma smiling sleepily up at him, hair adorably mussed. Sunlight peeked through the slats of his blinds, shining over his sheets and her sheet-covered, nude form.

“Happy New Year,” she murmured, stretching up to catch his lips in a warm, toe-curling kiss. 

“The best,” he answered, grinning at the little yawn-laugh she let out in response.

Much to his excitement and relief, she never left for America, and they had spent most of the past week attached at the hip – often literally. It turned out that being promoted to a position that dealt almost exclusively with red tape had not been what she’d wanted out of her SHIELD career, and had changed her mind about accepting the promotion even before he’d made his rambling confession at the Boxing Day party. Coulson, being the understanding director that he was, had suggested she take over from Turgeon as the head of the London science division instead, and _that_ position she had readily accepted. Fitz was well aware that he was now sleeping with his boss, but, to be honest, he couldn’t care less about anything his coworkers might say about that.

“What do you want to do today?” She nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck and stifled another yawn. 

“Stay in bed,” he answered promptly, earning him a giggle. 

“You’re insatiable,” she mumbled against his skin, and he slid one hand up and down the soft skin of her back, as if reassuring himself that she hadn’t disappeared while he’d slept.

They’d spent the night before going out to dinner, and, after a fair amount of flirting and wheedling, Jemma had dragged him onto the dance floor. It had been an awkward ten minutes for everyone involved, but she’d smiled and laughed so much that he supposed his dignity really didn’t matter. When they’d wound up back at his flat, they’d fooled around like teenagers and then made love like it was their first time all over again, and Fitz had been stone cold sober the entire night. (One measly glass of wine didn’t _really_ count as alcohol anyway, did it?) The last thing he wanted to do was forget any moment he was allowed to spend loving Jemma.

So, for the first time in however many years, he’d started a new year without a hangover, and he had someone he loved wrapped in his arms. Fitz was pretty sure he would never, ever get enough of that – or of her. 

“Definitely.” Craning his head down, he pressed a kiss against her hair. “And I won’t apologize for it.”

“Good,” she mumbled, withholding yet another yawn. “But can you be insatiable in a little bit? Sleepy. Warm. Comfy.”

“I’m with you,” he answered, watching as she tucked the sheet up around her shoulders. “That’s all I need.”

She let out a soft coo and snuggled herself as close in to him as she could be. Although he could feel her breathing even out against him as she faded back into sleep, Fitz stayed awake, combing his fingers gently through her hair. Perhaps today deserved an entry in that diary, after all – just to commemorate his new start with Jemma. She was worth more than any words he could come up with, but for now, his chicken-scratch and heartfelt adoration would have to do.


End file.
